WILLIAM WENTWORTH, familiarly called Billy, was faithfully following the plow. He was not in any way a conventional plowman. Neither in the appearance of the field, nor of the plow, nor of the animals, nor of Billy himself, was there anything to recall Holbein's picture of the peasant and his misery, or that tended concretely to realize the usual vision brought up by the words "a man following the plow." In the first place, Billy was not exactly following the plow; to speak with scrupulous correctness, he was riding the plow. The animals that drew both him and the plow were neither slow, clumsy oxen, crowding each other beneath a heavy yoke, nor yet galled-shouldered, bony horses, but two strong, broad-breasted mules, with great ears and neat, slim legs. We hesitate to mention this fact, but realism and truth are the great things, after all, and sentiment and the traditional plowman must give way to them.

The plow itself would have puzzled any or all of the great farmers, from Cain to the author of The Hundred Points of Good Husbandry; and many

an honest son of the soil since the days of Tusser would have considered it good for nothing but old iron and firewood. It was a complicated affair, on wheels, with a variety of contrivances for regulating the depth to which the ground should be stirred, for "hilling up," and for hoisting the shovels entirely out of the ground. In fact, it was not even called a plow; it was a cultivator, and Billy was not plowing preparatory to sowing the seed, but was cultivating Indian corn.

Still the scene was picturesque enough, for any one with an eye for color and an accommodating sense of the general fitness of things. The long rows of corn, stretching over the gentle rise of ground and confusedly mixing up their broad, waving blades at the summit, were a deep green, and the broad, rectangular field, separated from the open prairie surrounding it by no other boundaries than the sharply marked lines between the different shades of this sylvan color, seemed like a dark, square-cornered oasis in a desert of coarse grass and gaudy flowers.

When Billy reached the top of the slight ridge, if he had looked about him over the thousand hills of waving corn, he would have seen, beyond an intervening stretch of prairie that lay dull and darkened by the shadow of a cloud, a distant field of yellow barley fast ripening for the harvest, and one of wheat just turning, that flashed brightly in the flooding light of the evening sun. The western sky was fringed with brilliantcolored clouds, decked out in borrowed finery to attend the glorious setting of their creditor, and Billy might have let his eyes wander from earth to sky and from sky to earth, in an uncertainty of æsthetic enjoyment; but he merely glanced at the sun behind the clouds, and calculated how many rounds the mules could make before quitting-time. For he was impatient to be at the end of his day's labor; not because he found it hard work to ride over the rough ground so many hours every day, nor because he was hungry, — though plowing corn is both a tiresome and hungergiving occupation, but Billy was in love!

It is quite natural and perfectly possible for a plowman to be in love. Did not Cuddie Headrigg love and woo and win pretty Jenny Dennison? Was not one of the most promiscuous, and yet most faithful, lovers we know of a plowman? And was not But it is unnecessary to quote precedences; for if Billy had been the first plowman in the world who had ever loved and been impatient to fly to the presence of his charmer, the fact would not have cooled his ardor nor soothed his impatience; and when he had decided that he could complete that round and another before taking out the mules, Billy sent his long whip whistling about their great ears, and hurried them through the corn, as if the sun were in the eastern instead of in the western sky, and they were starting fresh in the morning instead of reaching the end of a long day's work.

The faithful mules, however, knew their driver's mood; the habit of weeks had taught them to know that the remainder of their task for the day was now a fixed amount, and that as soon as it was finished they would be led to the trough of cool water and the manger of bright oats and fragrant hay. So they responded willingly to Billy's urging, and soon came out at the edge of the field; and then, beginning on their last round, the rows were half a mile long,

finished it in twenty minutes by Billy's heavy silver watch, a very reliable timepiece for any period of time less than an hour in duration.

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When Billy had led the mules to the watering-trough, and brought the windmill round to the breeze to pump fresh water from the deep well, —“a hundred and thirteen feet, if it is an inch," Farmer Fuller would often declare, he was somewhat disappointed and surprised that no one came to the door to tell him to hurry in, for supper was waiting; or else playfully to accuse him of laziness for "turning out" so early; or to ask him how many acres he had got over; or, under some pretext or other, to greet him and let him know his comings and goings were matters of interest to at least one person in the world.

"I wonder where she is," thought Billy; and imagining that she had perhaps not heard him talking to the eager brutes as they made impatiently for the water, though he had shouted "without any mitigation or remorse of voice," he began whistling loudly for the dog. Tige came running up readily enough, in fact, he had been almost at Billy's heels for the last ten minutes, but no one appeared at the open door; and Billy was finally obliged to lead the mules off to the stable, and give them their oats and hay, without getting a sight of Eva Fuller's pretty figure in the doorway, or hearing her innocent laugh at his dust-begrimed face; without an opportunity of showing how well he could

take a harmless jest, when it came from her.

"If that young Phillips has been around here again, with his buggy and fancy harness," Billy muttered, as he thrust the pitchfork viciously in the manger and packed down the hay with a vehemence entirely needless, "why, if he has, there'll be trouble on the ranche, that's all."

When he had washed the streaked layer of soil from his face, and tried in vain for some time to brush the kink out of the ends of his black hair, it was always a trial to Billy that his hair would curl, he entered the house, and ate his supper of baked potatoes and crisp bacon and fresh eggs alone with Farmer Fuller and his wife. Eva was not there to laugh and chatter, and Billy took his glass of milk from Mrs. Fuller's masculine hand instead of Eva's, which was not masculine by any means. When the fresh plate of snowy biscuit, demanded by the hearty appetites of Billy and Farmer Fuller, was brought in from the kitchen, it was that hard-working woman's tall frame and austere visage that Billy saw in the door, and not Eva's neatly aproned figure and laughing eyes,

the usual vision that greeted him at this point in the evening meal.

Billy helped himself to another biscuit. "Where is Eva?" he asked, at last, of the old farmer, his desire to know what had become of her mastering his determination to appear indiffer

ent.

"Young Phillips took her out buggyridin', this afternoon," answered Fuller, sugaring his second cup of coffee.

"He seems to enjoy trottin' his bays over the prairie," observed Billy, by way of starting a discussion of Phillips. "I should think he would want to get over that eighty-acre corn-field again. It's a mighty weedy piece, and this hot weather is liftin' it right out o' the ground a'most. It'll soon be too high to plow."

"Corn is just climbin' right along, this weather, that's a fact," and the honest Fuller smiled in anticipation of full cribs; "but Phillips has hired another man, and has put him to work on the eighty-acre piece."

"Humph! he might as well let the weeds take it as to pay it out in wages. Why don't he have his son do it? He's a big, strappin' fellow enough."

"You must remember," struck in Mrs. Fuller, "that Mr. Phillips is n't obliged to have his son work, unless he chooses; and if Robert would rather enjoy himself on a pleasant evening, and take Eva for a buggy-ride, it's nobody's business."

"No, no, mother," and her husband shook his head; "a man that won't work ought n't to eat, I say. Not but what I'm willin' for young fellers to have their pleasure, and all that; but if I had the fortune of Lazarus I should bring up my sons to work."

"Well, if other people think different, it's nobody's business, as I said."

"Of course, so far as the work goes, I'm not meddlin' with other people's business. If they want to let their children go to bed without bein' sleepy and sit down to the table without bein' hungry, that's their lookout; and, as you say, if Bob Phillips wants to galivant all over the country just as corn weather is comin' on the strongest, and the barley's ready to cut, and the oats pretty near ripe, and the wheat turnin', why, it's none o' my business. But when but when, I say," and Fuller laid down his knife and fork to give added emphasis to his words and mark the deliberation with which they were uttered, "when you go further 'n that, and say it's nobody's business when he takes Eva out buggy-ridin', you go too far."

"Well, it's nobody's but hers," retorted Mrs. Fuller, decidedly; " and if she did n't choose to go she would n't. But she's tickled enough to go, poor girl,

after workin' in the kitchen all day;" and the gray eyes looked right through Billy at Tige, who was patiently waiting behind his master's chair for his supper-time to come. Mrs. Fuller was not sorry to get in a back-hander, as Billy mentally designated this speech, at her daughter's lover. He winced momentarily, but brightened up and nodded his approbation energetically when the old farmer continued his protest.

er,

"Now you don't go far enough, moththat's always the with way you: you either go too far, or you don't go far enough." In spite of his slow, measured way of speaking, there was a sound of impatience in his voice which his wife knew better than to provoke further. So she silently busied herself over her plate while he continued: "Here's Billy, now, has been with us for two years and more. He quit the herder's business (not that I approve of the wild sort of life they carry on, but he was used to it and liked it), he quit it, I say, and came to work for me, - and a good hand he's been, no one can deny, -because he happened to take a fancy to Eva's pretty face; and he was about right there, too; and he has stayed with us through two harvests, and been a faithful hand. He has saved his wages, and preempted as good a quarter-section of land as there is in the South Platte valley; he's got Eva to likin' him, and we've told 'em God bless 'em :' and for him to lose her now through your worldly and unconsiderate notions about this Phillips chap-just as if he was better than other people because he's been away to school a few months, and his father's got three or four sections of land and a few more head o' stock than the balance of us!-why, I say it would why, I say it would be just like presentin' him with the cup o' Croesus".

"Cup of Tantalus, pa," interrupted a merry voice behind Billy's chair, that made his ears tingle with pleasure. He hoped that Eva had not caught the drift

of the conversation, however, and was just going to turn round and feast his eyes with the sight of her, and let her see the joy in them, when he heard her ask some one to come in and have some supper; so he speared another potato and almost scalded himself with hot coffee instead.

"Billy, will you go out and drive Mr. Phillips's horses around to the stable?" asked the young lady carelessly, as she laid aside her smart bonnet with the bright pink ribbons.

Billy muttered something very low, but was pushing back his chair when the honest old farmer began:

"You'll do no such thing, Billy; you just sit where you are and eat your supper. Tell the fine young gentleman, Eva, that if his fiery steeds won't stand hitched to the hitchin'-post he can drive 'em round to the stable, and put 'em in the empty stall "

"Why, Rufus!" exclaimed his wife. "and that he 'll have to excuse Billy and me," went on Rufus; "for we're eatin' our suppers, and it's ruinous to the digestion to be disturbed at meal-time."

Eva was somewhat surprised at this, for her father was usually very scrupulous on points of hospitality; but she delivered his message, choosing her own way of expressing the matter. Mr. Phillips, however, had already decided not to accept the hospitality of the Fullers, and after a brief conversation with Eva, of which the others could hear, now and then, a little silvery laugh accompanied by a great guffaw, he drove off.

Finally, when she came in and took her place at the table, Billy ventured to look at her. She did not deign to offer him a greeting, but broke into an enthusiastic description of her ride, addressing herself in a general way to her father and mother. Of course Billy could listen; he was sitting opposite her and could not well help hearing her