Toiling and hoping till harvest succeeds.
Hearts are like fallow, and need to be tilled;
Nothing but evil things else will they yield.
Plough them well, sow them well; crops of good deeds
Follow, if only we keep down the weeds.
Keep down the weeds, brothers, keep down the weeds!
God sends His sunshine, and harvest succeeds.
The coulter was again thrust into the fire, and once again the long lever of the blacksmith’s bellows, with a cow’s horn by way of handle, was gripped to raise another “heat,” when a second visitor crossed the smithy threshold, as different from the grim, gaunt, wrinkled and forbidding form and features of old Kasper Crabtree as a briar-rose differs from a hedgestake, an icicle from a sunbeam, or a polar bear from a summer fawn.
Gathering her skirts of neat-patterned printed calico around her to keep them from the surrounding grime, the new-comer stole noiselessly behind the unconscious smith, laid her dainty hands on his brawny shoulders, and springing high enough to catch a kiss from his swarthy cheek, landed again on terra firma, and, with a ripple of laughter which sounded like a strain of music, stood with merry, upturned face to greet Blithe Natty’s startled gaze.
“Give me that back again, you unconscionable thief!” said Nathan, laying his big hand on her dainty little wrist. “It’s flat felony, and I’ll prosecute you with the utmost rigour of the law.”