The ash trees fell beneath the ax, the trunks were cut to rail lengths,
and the oxen dragged logs through muck and mire and brush and bramble
to the line of fence, and there the maul swung steadily in great
strokes upon the iron and wooden wedges, the smell of timber newly
split was in the air, and the heavy rails were lifted, and the fence
began its growth.

And it was lonesome in the depths of the wood, for the black ash swale
is not tenanted by many birds and squirrels as are the ridges, and only
the striped woodpecker or a wandering jay fluttered about at times, or
a coon might seek the pools for frogs. Harlson had circumstance for
thought. Only the hard labor cleared his blood and brain, and helped
him.

Could fortune come to him who had such a load upon his conscience? Was
not he a violator of all law, as he had learned it,--law of both God
and man? Had he an excuse at all, and what was the degree of it? He
could not endure the time when it became too dark in the wood for work,
and when he drove the jaded oxen out into the field and to the barn,
and it was yet too early for seeking the hay-mow, which was of clover,
and there seeking sleep. A clover mow is a wonderful sleep-compeller.
There are the softness and fragrance, but, sometimes, even with that,
he would be wakeful. To avoid himself, the young man would, at last,
go in early evening to the older farmers' homes,--for it was his own
country and he knew them all,--and there, with the sons and hired men,
pitch quoits in the road before the house.

Quoits is still a game of farmers' sons, and the horseshoe is superior
to the quoit of commerce and the town. The open side affords facility
for aggressive feats of cleverness in displacing an opponent's cast,