INTRODUCTION. 21 



that it was settled, the uncertainty over, yet uneasy, 

 feeling within him a rising tide of restlessness, an 

 aching to get to work somewhere. 



They did not walk very far. Just beyond the 

 barn was a field of flat clay land, wet, mostly poor 

 and unprofitable. All over the field rose little clay 

 chimneys, the work of crayfish. The boy stopped 

 here. "Father, may I drain this field?" "Yes; it 

 ought to have been done years ago," was the reply 

 full of hearty encouragement. The boy went to* the 

 village and came home with a ditching spade with a 

 blade 18 inches long. He stretched a line where the 

 first ditch was to be laid and began digging a long 

 narrow ditch in which to lay tiles. How happy he 

 was all at once! Those ranch muscles of his were 

 in good training; mightily he dug. And as he be- 

 gan pushing his muscles against that soil he began 

 to believe in it, to have faith in it. And after he 

 got down in the ditch and had rubbed the mud on 

 him well he forgot the old ranch. When at last the 

 ditch was dug and the tiles laid and covered there 

 was one strip of land dry, only a beginning, true, 

 but it was a beginning. The boy stood there that 

 afternoon as he finished covering the tile and leaned 

 on his spade and dreamed, and talked aloud to the 

 old field. "Old field," he said, "some day I will 

 make you all dry. Some day, old field, I will make 

 your soil rich. Some day I will cover you over with 

 clover, and with corn, and with alfalfa too. Some 

 day, old field, out of you shall sprout and grow a 

 home, a home for that sweetheart of mine." And 



