mysterious way they made a bed for themselves in the soil.

They bought a cow from one of the neighbors, but before the summer was
over brought her back indignantly, declaring that she would give no
milk. Randolph declared that he knew she had it, for she had plenty the
last time he milked her, and that was several days ago--she should have
more now. It came out in the evidence that they only took from the cow
the amount of milk that they needed, reasoning that she had a better
way of keeping it than they had. The cow's former owner exonerated her
from all blame in the matter, saying that "Rosie" was all right as a
cow; but, of course, she was "no bloomin' refrigerator!"

There was only one day in the week when the Brydon brothers could work
with any degree of enjoyment, and that was on Sunday, when there was
the added zest of wickedness. To drive the oxen up and down the field
in full view of an astonished and horrified neighborhood seemed to take
away in large measure from the "beastliness of labor," and then, too,
the Sabbath calm of the Black Creek valley seemed to stimulate their
imagination as they discoursed loudly and elaborately on the present
and future state of the oxen, consigning them without hope of release
to the remotest and hottest corner of Gehenna. But the complacent old
oxen, graduates in the school of hard knocks and mosquitoes, winked
solemnly, switched their tails and drowsed along unmoved.

The sailors had been doing various odd jobs around the house on Sundays
ever since they came, but had not worked openly until one particular
Sunday in May. All day they hoped that someone would come and stop them
from working, or at least beg of them to desist, but the hot afternoon
wore away, and there was no movement around any of the houses on the
plain. The guardian of the morals of the neighborhood, Mrs. Maggie