X


More than two months had passed. Twilight of closing February was
falling over the frozen fields. The last crow had flapped low and
straight toward the black wood beyond the southern horizon. No
sunset radiance streamed across the wide land, for all day a
solitude of cloud had stretched around the earth, bringing on the
darkness now before its time.

In a small hemp field on an edge of the vast Kentucky table-land, a
solitary breaker kept on at his work. The splintered shards were
piled high against his brake: he had not paused to clear them out
of his way except around his bootlegs. Near by, the remnant of the
shock had fallen over, clods of mingled frost and soil still
sticking to the level butt-ends. Several yards to windward, where
the dust and refuse might not settle on it, lay the pile of gray-
tailed hemp,--the coarsest of man's work, but finished as
conscientiously as an art. From the warming depths of this, rose
the head and neck of a common shepherd dog, his face turned
uneasily but patiently toward the worker. Whatever that master
should do, whether understood or not, was right to him; he did not
ask to understand, but to love and to serve. Farther away in
another direction leaned the charred rind of a rotting stump. At
intervals the rising wind blew the ashes away, exposing live coals--
that fireside of the laborer, wandering with him from spot to spot
over the bitter lonely spaces.