42 HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 



soil from around it, leaving it bare. Once in 

 a while, when the bowlders absolutely blocked 

 plowing, the largest of them would be thrown 

 up into piles at ragged intervals through the 

 field ; and there the piles would lie. After that 

 the plowman would work around them; and 

 gradually a tangle of wild growths would con- 

 vert them into ragged, unsightly mounds. Be- 

 tween the mounds the shallow scratching of 

 the plow over the uneven surface left a multi- 

 tude of little runways for the waters of oc- 

 casional flooding rains and there were the 

 three brook-channels, waiting to bear away the 

 tons upon tons of earth that every torrent 

 washed down to them. I hate to think of the 

 wealth of good soil that's been washed off these 

 fields and lost in the course of fifty years. 

 Since we began picking up the stone and using 

 it to build walls for saving the washed soil 

 but let me get to that after a while, when the 

 time comes. I'm crowding things. 



Besides the vast litter of stone, the field held 

 a ragged army of huge stumps walnut and 

 oak. They were so big and so burly that in 

 half a hundred years they had only half rotted 

 out. Sitting on the fence that morning, we 

 counted forty or fifty of them standing around. 



