Homer gave the men their pail of oatmeal and water, and went to his own team. As he passed his horses, he put out his hand to take the nearest one by the bridle. It started and swerved nervously from his extended hand. His face lowered for an instant; the next moment it flushed as though his swarthy cheek felt the impatient blow he had given the horse the day before. He took the lid off his pail and let the horses drink the contents, giving them the pail alternately; each pushed its nose down through the cool water to get at the meal at the bottom, making a great sucking as it did so, and resisting stubbornly the efforts of the other to usurp the pail. They made short work of the draught, but were loath to give up the pail, and stretched their noses after Homer as he hung it upon a fence-stake. He took their bridles and proceeded to the field, their harness-chains clinking, the leaves on their heads and backs rustling, their noses quivering as they licked at the grains of oatmeal sticking to their bits.
Homer was reaping the west field. A forty-acre expanse of growing grain it had been a few days before, but now it was all down save a little square in the hollow, at one corner of which stood the self-binder, an ungainly affair, with its windmill-like arrangement for pushing the sheaves along.
The shocks of grain stood round and round this square of standing wheat, as if they fain would protect it from the fate that had laid them low; but Homer and his horses threaded their ranks, and soon the lumbering machine was in motion, leaving a track of prostrate sheaves that presently the men would take in pairs, and, putting eight together, leave them for the sun to dry.
Through all that long forenoon Homer thought of his mother. It was not "yarb tea" he needed, but
"To take in draughts of life from the gold fount
Of kind and passionate looks."
The heat grew intense. The horses were panting, the sweat lathering from beneath the harness-straps; a stifling dust was rising from the wheels and covering Homer's face with a grayish veil; the grasshoppers fled in thousands before the machine; the grain gleamed dizzily golden in the sun. It was just the color of her hair—perhaps the feverishness of the heat made the thought unpleasant. That hair had been bright enough to drive him almost mad, but it was not brightness he wanted now, nor gayety, nor laughter; he wanted the benison of calm eyes, the shadow of cool hair, the tenderness of tears, the strength of a tried soul, and out of this chaos of longing was slowly evolved a figure.
Beginning with a dark cloud, that hovered for a time before him and then floated away fragment by fragment till all was gone save enough to halo round a pale and steadfast face, with dark locks of hair, and the face at first only outlined by the curving tresses, gradually assumed features—dark eyes and
"most tender brows,
Meant for men's lips, to make them glad of God
Who gives them such to kiss"—
pale, sorrowful lips, and a chin which told of strength to endure, yet pleaded most eloquently against a test; and then came patient shoulders and the bosom of a mother. He gazed at this figure long—or so it seemed. It eased his eyes, and the heat was really blinding; even this vision could not blot it out. He closed his eyes. The next moment frightful sounds confused his ears, he felt a sharp pain in his head, heard a cry—surely from the lips he had just seen in his waking dream.... With a great gasp, Homer Wilson came back from his momentary swoon to find himself lying on the ground, his machine a few yards in advance, and Myron Holder bending with tears raining down her white lace.
"Oh, Homer—Homer," she cried, "are you killed?"