With the utmost care he hooked the whisp of hay—to the last straw—and drew it over the side.
“’Tis a sin,” said he, “t’ waste good hay like that.”
Broad fields, hay and wheat and corn, all yellow, waving to the breeze—the sun flooding all—were far, far beyond this man’s imagination. He did not know that in other lands the earth yields generously to the men who sow seed. How little did the harvest mean to him! The world is a world of rock and sea—of sea and naked rock. Soil is gathered in buckets. Gardens are made by hand. The return is precious in the sight of men.
Uncle Zeb Gale—Daddy Gale, who had long ago lost count of his grandchildren, they were so many—Ol’ Zeb tottered up from the sea, gasping and coughing, but broadly smiling in the intervals. He had a great cod in one hand, and his old cloth cap was in the other. His head was bald, and his snowy beard covered his chest. Toil and the weight of years had bowed his back, spun a film over his eyes and cracked his voice. But neither toil nor age nor hunger nor cold had broken his cheery interest in all the things of life. Ol’ Zeb smiled in a sweetly winning way. He stopped to pass a word with the stranger, who was far away from home, and therefore, no doubt, needed a heartening word or two.
“Fine even, zur,” said he.
“Tis that, Uncle Zeb. How have the fish been to-day?”
“Oh, they be a scattered fish off the Mull, zur. But ’tis only a scattered one. They don’t run in, zur, like what they used to when I were young, sure.”
“How many years ago, sir?”
