ed Lenore, and she ran along to meet the
harvester. She waved her hand to the driver, Bill Jones, another old
hand, long employed by her father. Bill hauled back on the many-branched
reins, and when the horses stopped the clattering, whirring roar of the
machine also ceased.

"Howdy, miss! Reckon this 's a regular I.W.W. hold-up."

"Worse than that, Bill," gaily replied Lenore as she mounted the
platform where another man sat on a bag of barley. Lenore did not
recognize him. He looked rugged and honest, and beamed upon her.

"Watch out fer yer dress," he said, pointing with grimy hand to the
dusty wheels and braces so near her.

"Let me drive, Bill?" she asked.

"Wal, now, I wisht I could," he replied, dryly. "You sure can drive,
miss. But drivin' ain't all this here job."

"What can't I do? I'll bet you--"

"I never seen a girl that could throw anythin' straight. Did you?"

"Well, not so very. I forgot how you drove the horses.... Go ahead.
Don't let me delay the harvest."

Bill called sonorously to his twelve horses, and as they bent and
strained and began to bob their heads, the clattering roar filled the
air. Also a cloud of dust and thin, flying streams of chaff enveloped
Lenore. The high stalks of barley, in wide sheets, fell before the
cutter upon an apron, to be carried by feeders into the body of the
machine. The straw, denuded of its grain, came out at the rear, to be
dropped, while the grain streamed out of a tube on the side next to
Lenore, to fall into an open sack. It made a short shift of harvesting.

Lenore liked the even, nodding rhythm of the plodding horses, and the
way Bill threw a pebble from a sack on his seat, to hit this or that
horse not keeping in line or pulling his share. Bill's aim was unerring.
He never hit the wrong horse, which would have been the case had he used
a whip. The grain came out in so tiny a stream that Lenore wondered how
a bag was ever filled. But she saw presently that even a tiny stream, if
running steadily, soon made bulk. That was proof of the value of small
things, even atoms.

No marvel was it that Bill and his helper were as grimy as stokers of a
furnace. Lenore began to choke with the fine dust and to feel her eyes
smart and to see it settle on her hands and dress. She then had
appreciation of the nature of a ten-hour day for workmen cutting
eighteen acres of barley. How would they ever cut the two thousand acres
of wheat? No wonder many men were needed.