My plowman was a young man—a handsome, high-born-looking youth who came one Sunday evening to arrange terms. He was stylishly dressed, and I took him for a college lad on vacation. He assured me, however, that his schooling had been acquired in the neighborhood, that he was a farmer on his own account, with a team of his own, and that he was accustomed to plowing rocky land. His name was Luther Merrill, and if I had thought him handsome in his fine clothes, I considered him really superb when he arrived next morning in work attire and started his great plow and big white horses around the furrows. There had been a shower in the night and the summer foliage was fresh—the leaves shining. Against a gleaming green background of maple, alder, and wild clematis, Luther Merrill in shirt and trousers, his collar open, his sleeves turned back, bending to the plow and calling directions to his sturdy team, was something to make one's heart leap for joy. I photographed him unobserved. I longed to paint him.
My admiration grew as I observed the character of his plowing. A Western boy wouldn't have stood it five minutes. The soil was at least half stone, and the stones were not all loose. Every other rod the plow brought up with a jerk that nearly flung the plowman over the top of it. Then he had to yank and haul it out, lift it over, and start again. He did not lose his temper, even when he broke one of his plow points, of which, it seemed, he had brought a supply, in anticipation. He merely called something encouraging to his horses and went on. I know about plowing, and I once plowed a small blackberry-patch that was mostly roots, and nearly swore my teeth loose in the half a day it took me. But that had been nothing to this, and this was continual. I decided that nothing could feaze Luther Merrill.
Still, he was not absolute proof against bees. I have mentioned the swarm between the floors of the old house, and in the course of the morning Luther's plowing took him near the corner where it seems they had their entrance. It was a bright, hot day and they were quite busy, but not busy enough to prevent them from giving prompt attention to us as we came along.
I was holding one handle of the plow at the moment, pretending to help, when I noticed a peculiar high-pitched note close to my ear, and a certain pungent "mad smell" which bees know how to make. Something told me just then that I had business in the upper corner of the lot and I set out to attend to it. Two of those bees came along. They hurried a good deal—they had to, to keep up with me. I discouraged them as much as possible with an earnest fanning or beating motion and sharp words. I was not entirely successful. I felt something hot and sudden on the lobe of one ear just as I dove beneath the bushes that draped the upper wall, and I had an almost immediate sensation of its becoming hard and pear-shaped.
I peered out presently to see what had become of Luther Merrill. He had not basely deserted his team—he was too high-class for that, but he was moving from the point of attack with as little delay as possible, grasping the lines with one hand and pawing the air with the other. By the time I reached him he was plowing in a rather remote corner, and he had lost some of his beauty—one eye was quite closed. He said he would plow down there by the house late in the evening, or on the next wet day.
Luther plowed and harrowed and sowed for us—two fields of rye and timothy mixed, to insure a future meadow, this on Westbury's advice. A part of one field had great boulders in it, which he suggested we take out. I said we would drop the boulders into the brook at intervals to make the pretty falls it now lacked. Next morning, Luther Merrill came with a heavy chain and a stone-boat (an immense sled without runners) and for two happy days we reconstructed the world, dislocating and hauling boulders that had not stirred since the ice age.
Luther was an expert at chaining out boulders, and he loved the job. When we got one to the brook, and after great prying and grunting finally boosted it in with a mighty splash, Luther would wave his arms, jump about, and laugh like the high-hearted boy that he was. Those were lovely days.
