Now Mrs Bosenna, after waiting some ten minutes by the lower gate for Dinah (whose capital fault was unpunctuality), had lost patience and walked back towards Rilla to meet and reproach her. She had almost reached the small gate when she spied Dinah hurrying down the steep path to the highroad, and halted. Dinah, coming up, excused herself between catches of breath. She had been detained by the plucking of a fowl, and a feather—or, as you might call it a fluff—had found its way into her throat. "Which," said she, "the way I heaved, mistress, is beyond belief."
Mrs Bosenna having admonished her to be more careful in future, turned to retrace her steps to the field.
They reached it and climbed the slope crosswise. They had scarcely gained the edge of the upper plateau when Mrs Bosenna stopped short and gave a gasp. For at that moment there broke on their view, against the near sky-line, the figure of a man awkwardly turning a plough, behind a team of horses.
"Save us, mistress!" cried keen-eyed Dinah. "If it isn't—"
"It can't be!" cried Mrs Bosenna, as if in the same breath.
"It's Cap'n Hunken," said Dinah positively.
"But why? Dinah—why?"
"It's Cap'n Hunken," repeated Dinah. "The Lord knows why. If he's doin' it for fun, I never saw worse entry to a furrow in my life."
"Nor I. But what can it mean?" Mrs Bosenna, panting, paused at the sound of derisive cheers, not very distant.
The two women ran forward a pace or two, until their gaze commanded the whole stretch of the upper slope. 'Bias, stolidly impelling his team— a roan and a rusty-black—had, in the difficult process of steering the turn, been too closely occupied to let his gaze travel aside. He was off again: his stalwart back, stripped to braces and shirt, bent as he trudged in wake of the horses, clinging to the plough-tail, helplessly striving to guide them by the wavy parallel his last furrow had set.