The harvest came, bounteous, glorious, but the winds came and
blew it into tangles, and the rain matted it here and there close
to the ground, increasing the work of gathering it threefold.
Oh, how they toiled in those glorious days! Clothing dripping with
sweat, arms aching, filled with briers, fingers raw and bleeding,
backs broken with the weight of heavy bundles, Haskins and his
man toiled on. Tummy drove the harvester, while his father and a
hired man bound on the machine. In this way they cut ten acres
every day, and almost every night after supper, when the hand
went to bed, Haskins returned to the field shocking the bound
grain in the light of the moon. Many a night he worked till his
anxious wife came out at ten o'clock to call him in to rest and
lunch. At the same time she cooked for the men, took care of the
children, washed and ironed, milked the cows at night, made the
butter, and sometimes fed the horses and watered them while her
husband kept at the shocking.
No slave in the Roman galleys could have toiled so frightfully and
lived, for this man thought himself a free man, and that he was
working for his wife and babes.
When he sank into his bed with a deep groan of relief, too tired to
change his grimy, dripping clothing, he felt that he was getting
nearer and nearer to a home of his own, and pushing the wolf of
want a little farther from his door.
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