across its surface. The first, an old gray mare, was breathing heavily,
her sides expanding and contracting like a bellows. Her wide nostrils
opened and closed with spasmodic motions. Her eyes were shut and she
seemed to be asleep. The other, a young and slender filly doing this
season the first real service of her life, pawed the ground restlessly,
snorted, shook her mane, rattled the harness chains and looked angrily
over her shoulder at the driver. The plowshare was buried deep in the
rich, alluvial soil, and a ribbon of earth rolled from its blade like a
petrified sea billow, crested with a cluster of daisies white as the
foam of a wave.

Between the handles of the plow and leaning on the crossbar, his back to
the horses, stood a young Quaker. His broad-brimmed hat, set carelessly
on the back of his head, disclosed a wide, high forehead; his flannel
shirt, open at the throat, exposed a strong, columnar neck, and a deep,
broad chest; his sunburned and muscular arms were folded across his
breast; figure and posture revealed the perfect concord of body and soul
with the beauty of the world; his great blue eyes were fixed upon the
notch in the hills where the sun had just disappeared; he gazed without
seeing and felt without thinking.

The boy approached this statuesque figure with a stealthy tread, and
plucking a long spear of grass tickled the bronzed neck. The hand of the
plowman moved automatically upward as if to brush away a fly, and at
this unconscious action the child, seized by a convulsion of laughter
and fearing lest it explode, stuffed his fists into his mouth. In the
opinion of this irreverent young skeptic his Uncle Dave was in a
"tantrum" instead of a "trance," and he thought such a disease demanded
heroic treatment.