swinging its mate with vigor. The
sun was just peeping from the broad lap of the prairie, casting the
beauty of color and of sparkle over all things. Ahead of the wagon
coveys of quail broke and ran swiftly in the track until tired, when,
with a side movement the tall grass by the border absorbed them.
Flocks of prairie-chickens, frightened by the clatter, sprang winging
from the roadside, and together sailed away on spread wings. The man
in the wagon looked about him and forgetting all else in the
quick-flowing blood of morning, smiled gladly.

He stopped at the edge of the field, tying the reins loosely and
building up the sideboards, gradually shorter, each above the other,
pyramid-like, until they reached higher than his own head as he stood
in the wagon-box. Stiff from the jolting and inactivity of the drive,
he jumped out upon the uneven surface of the corn-field.

Slowly at first, as sore fingers rebelled against the roughness of
husks, he began work, touching the frosty ears gingerly; then as
he warmed to the task, stopping at nothing. The frost, dense,
all-covering, shook from the stalks as he moved, coloring the rusty
blue of his overalls white, and melting ice-cold, wet him through
to the skin on arms and shoulders and knees. Swiftly, two motions to
the ear, he kept up a tapping like the regular blows of a hammer, as
the ears struck the sideboard. Fifteen taps to the minute, you would
have counted; a goodly man's record.

This morning, though, Landers' mind was not upon his work. The vague,
uncertain restlessness that marked the birth of a desire for broader
things than he had known heretofore, was taking form in his brain. He
himself could not have told what he wanted, what he planned; he simply
felt a distaste for the things of Now; an unrest that prevented his
sitting quiet; that took him up very early at morning; that made him
husk more bushels of corn, and toss more bundles of grain into the
self-feed of a threshing machine than any other man he knew; that kept
him awake thinking at night until the discordant snores of the family
sent him to bed, with the covers over his ears in self-defence.

A vague wonder that such thoughts were in his mind at all was upon
him. He was the son of his parents; his life so far had been their
life: why should he not be as content as they?

He could not answer, yet the distaste grew. Irresistibly he had
acquired a habit of seeing unpleasant things: the meanness and th