depended on her firmness, and she might find the job harder than she
thought; but on the whole he imagined she would be equal to the strain.

A week later, Charnock sat, one afternoon, in the saddle of his
gang-plow, tearing a row of furrows through the dusty sod. The sweating
horses moved leisurely, and he did not urge them as he moodily watched
the tangled grass part before the shares and vanish beneath the polished
surface of the turned-up clods. He was breaking new soil, doing work
that would be paid for in the future, and knew the reward of his labor
might never be his. When he reached the end of the plowing he stopped
and let the horses rest while he looked about.

One side of the long furrows gleamed in the strong light, and another
team was moving towards him from the opposite end. The sun was hot, but
the wind was fresh, and thin clouds of dust blew across the plain. Still
the belt he was plowing was good soil; the firm black _gumbo_ that holds
the moisture the wheat plant needs. There was something exhilarating in
the rushing breeze and glow of light, but Charnock frowned and wondered
why he had worked so long. He had no real hope, and admitted that he had
continued his spasmodic efforts because he could not face defeat.

For all that, he had not been fighting entirely for his farm. He
wanted to keep his freedom; to break through trammels that were getting
tighter, and try to regain something that he had lost. Sometimes he felt
desperate, but now and then saw an elusive ray of hope. If he could hold
out until harvest and reap a record crop----

Then his hired man, driving the other plow, waved his arm, and Charnock
saw a rig lurch across a rise amidst a cloud of sand. It was the
mail-carrier going his round, but he would not have come that way unless