Before three years had gone Jennifer's department was increased by the birth of two sturdy little sons. They were both the image of Sam, so the women declared; but the men saw in each the image of their mother, and counted it a pity that they were not girls, for the like of Jennifer they reckoned scarce.
Chapter II
It was an evening toward the end of August, and the harvest was being gathered in. The fields on every side were dotted with the tented sheaves piled up as the custom is in the "catching" weather of the West, one sheaf reversed on the top of the cluster, so as to form a kind of roof. The long shadows of the shocks fell across the fields in the evening light. All the country was beautiful with that rich restfulness which comes in the autumn, as if the earth had finished its work. The glories of the sunset gave the sky a hundred delicate tints of gold and purple.
Here and there the women brought the sheaves, whilst the men piled them on the wagons. Away over the hill country in the east the great harvest moon was rising.
Jennifer, busy as ever, had got her two little ones settled for the night, and now was preparing a dainty supper for Sam's return; the savoury smell of it filled the place.
Then it was that, as to Job of old, one came breathless to the house with sad tidings. Sam had slipped from the stack and fallen on his head.
"Is—he—dead?" gasped Jennifer.