Jordan's Journey the fallen leaves were dancing
madly like a carnival in rough carousal. Watching them it was easy to
imagine that they found some frenzied joy in this dance of death--the
end to which they had moved from the young green of the bud through the
opulent abundance of the summer. The air was alive with their sighing.
They rustled softly under foot as Abel walked up the drive, and then,
whipped by a strong gust, fled in purple and wine-coloured multitudes
to the shelter of the box hedges, or, rising in flight above the naked
boughs, beat against the closed shutters before they came to rest
against the square brick chimneys on the roof.

Beneath the trees a solitary old negro was spreading manure over
the grass, hauling it in a wheelbarrow from a pile somewhere in the
barnyard. Back and forth he passed, scattering the fine manure from his
spade until the wheelbarrow was empty, when he replenished it in
the barnyard and returned to his sprinkling. All the while he smoked
steadily a long corncob pipe, and to watch him at his task, was to
receive an impression that the hauling of manure was sufficient to fill
one's life with dignity and contentment. The work appeared no longer a
menial employment but a sober and serious share of the great problem of
production.

"That's the way I intend to go about the work of my mill," thought Abel,
as he watched him. "When you do it like that it really makes very little
difference what you are doing. It all comes to good." A minute before
his thought had been on the new roller mill he had recently bought and
was now working in his primitive little building, which he had slightly
remodelled. The next thing to go, he supposed, would be the old wooden
wheel, with its brilliant enamel of moss, and within five years he
hoped to complete the reconstruction of his machinery on lines that were
scientific rather than picturesque. His water power was good, and by the
time he could afford an entire modern equipment, he would probably have
all the grain at his door that he was ready to handle. Then he began to
wonder, as he had often done of late, if the work of the farm and
the mill might be left safely to Abner and Archie when he went up to
Richmond to the General Assembly, in the event of his future election?
Already he had achieved a modest local fame as a speaker--for his voice
expressed the gradual political awakening of his class. Though he was in
advance of his age, it was evident