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 
