On the third day the hot winds grew vengeful. They swept across the prairies with a hissing sound as of flames sizzling through the heat of a furnace. The tassels, burnt now to a dingy brown, hung in wisps. The leaves drooped like tired arms. They no longer sang in the wind. They rattled, a hoarse, harsh rattle premonitory of death.
Far and near the fields lay scorched, withered, burnt to a crisp as if by the fast and furious blast of a raging prairie fire.
There was no longer need of harvest hands.
The harvest, gathered by the hot winds, was ended. The ruin was complete.
Their mission accomplished, the winds died down suddenly as they had risen and passed away across the barren prairies in a sigh.
Then up came the cooling breezes from the Gulf, light, zephyry clouds gathered, shut off the brazen sunlight and burst into a grateful shower, which descended upon the parched and deadened fields of corn.
But Seth!
Flung on his knees by the side of the bed in the corner of the hole in the ground, his face buried in his arms, he listened to the patter of those raindrops on the corn.
His eyes were dry; but a spring had broken somewhere near the region of his heart.
He owned himself defeated.