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Flowers were planted about the neatly kept log or frame houses; barnyards, granaries, etc., were kept in about as neat order as the homes, and the fences and corn-rows were rigidly straight. But every uncut weed distressed them; so also did every ungathered ear of grain, and all that was lost by birds and gophers; and this overcarefulness bred endless work and worry.
When he had finished the field of corn it was after sundown, and he came up to the house, hot, dusty, his shirt wringing wet with sweat, and his neck aching with the work of looking down all day at the corn-rows. His mood was still stern. The multitudinous lift, and stir, and sheen of the wide, green field had been lost upon him. "I wonder if she's milked them cows," he muttered to himself.
The chapel was a very imposing structure to Bradley. It was square and papered in grey-white with fluted columns of the Corinthian order of architecture, and that touch of history and romance did not fail of its effect on the country boys fresh from the barn-yard and the corn-rows. It added to their fear and self-abasement, as they rolled their slow eyes around and upward.
One of those Union men came with me as far as this gap, and then I came on well enough," replied Tom. "It's a wonder those horsemen didn't discover me. I threw myself flat on the ground between the old corn-rows, and saw them quite distinctly. Mr. Hobson said he would wait here for me."
They sprang up between the corn-rows before the stalks had disappeared from sight; they shot through the charred embers of the deserted camp-fire; everywhere, under the shade of each deciduous bush, protected by the shadow of the rank weeds which sprang up where the stock had fed, the young pines grew, and protected others, and shot slimly up, until their dense growth shut out the sunlight and choked the lately protecting shrubbery.
The most beautiful thing he ever saw was within the compass of his full sight at last, and whether to detain it by force or persuasion he did not know. Her dark hair, silky as the cleanest tassels of the corn, fell as naturally upon her perfect head as her teeth, white as the milky corn-rows, moved in the May cherries of her lips.
I did not jump or run that time; I merely opened out my wings and flew. Corn-rows, brush-piles, fences, were as nothing. I sailed over them like a gnat till I reached the big main road. I was not interested in short cuts, after that, and I didn't cross that field again for years. I was not afraid, but I did not wish to be surprised again. I recall another time But this is not a snake story.
There were melons in the corn-rows, that a week would have developed, but the soldiers dashed them open and sucked the sweet water. They threw clubs at the hanging apples till the ground was littered with them, and the hogs came afield to gorge; they slew the hogs and divided the fresh pork among themselves.
When he had finished the field of corn it was after sundown, and he came up to the house, hot, dusty, his shirt wringing wet with sweat, and his neck aching with the work of looking down all day at the corn-rows. His mood was still stern. The multitudinous lift, and stir, and sheen of the wide, green field had been lost upon him. "I wonder if she's milked them cows," he muttered to himself.
One morning Mostyn saw Saunders hoeing weeds out of the corn-rows in a field back of the house; and, taking another hoe, he joined him, working steadily by his friend's side till noon. And here he made a discovery. He found that the work furnished a sort of vent for the festering agony pent up within him.
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