33 o Next to the Ground 



required only the standards and pretty careful 

 driving. 



The driver of course walked beside, as be- 

 fitted a genuine ox team. It was always the 

 two or three-year-old oxen, fairly broken, 

 and toughened to work, that did the real 

 truckle-hauling. The calves might have 

 pulled Billy-Boy, or even Joe himself, easily. 

 But Joe would not impose upon anything 

 weak and young and as for risking Billy- 

 Boy anywhere there was the least danger 

 you could not have hired either Joe or Dan 

 to think of that. Billy-Boy was the apple of 

 every eye at White Oaks. Even Patsy, for 

 all she was so up-headed, delighted in his 

 tyranny, and was proud to be ranked the 

 most obedient of all his humble subjects. 



Well-matched oxen working for years in 

 the same yoke grow pathetically fond of each 

 other. They feed side by side at grass, lie 

 down and rise up together, low disconsol- 

 ately if by chance one gets out of sight, and 

 if forcibly separated, sometimes breach the 

 stoutest fences to reach one another. Ox 

 feet wear to the quick not so easily as 

 horses' feet do, but still so as to make shoe- 

 ing imperative if they needs must travel over 

 rocks either to the wagon or plough. An 

 ox-shoe is a queer-looking plate of iron, split 

 like the hoof, ill to make fast, not so easily 



