HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 85 



tra labor would cost more than the land was 

 worth; he wasn't talking of the shiftless ex- 

 pedients of farming from year to year. He 

 talked of next year, and the year after next, 

 and the long future. He saw exactly what I 

 was trying to get at. I think he was honestly 

 pleased at having a job that gave him oppor- 

 tunity according to his strength. He flew at 

 the stone-moving as if he'd found at last the 

 very sort of task he'd been looking for all his 

 life. 



Before he came, we had been putting stone 

 into rough walls along the creek bottoms, plan- 

 ning to save the soil that would be washed 

 down from the fields. My theory of it was all 

 right, though I'd had nothing in the way of 

 practice for a guide. Some of my results made 

 Sam's grin broaden into a laugh. He attacked 

 one of my walls and began to tear it out, 

 though it had a good fifty wagonloads of stone 

 in it. 



"We'll move this down to the edge of the 

 creek, instead of putting it here at the foot of 

 the bank," he said. "If we leave it here, all 

 that overflowed creek bottom is waste. Next 

 winter I can clear the brush off the bottom 

 and move the stone off the bank; and then if I 



