The Judge drove him out to Councill's one afternoon. Everybody they met seemed delighted to see him. Mrs. Councill came out to the horse-block, her bare arm held up to shield her eyes. "Well, Brad Talcott, how are you--anyway? you're jest in time to help me pick berries." Bradley sprang out and shook hands with hearty force. "Give us your dish." "H'yare!" yelled Councill from the load of hay he was driving in, "I can use you out here." "Oh, you go long," replied Mrs. Councill. "He's got better company and a better job." Out in the berry patch he talked over the neighborhood affairs and picked berries and killed mosquitoes, while the wind wandered by with rustling steps on the lombardy poplar leaves. The locusts sang and the grasshoppers snapped their shining wings. It was a blessed relief to his troubled older self, for he slipped back into the more tranquil life of his boyhood. At supper he sat at the table with the men, whose wet shirts showed how fierce the work of pitching the hay had been. "Be ye out f'r play or work, Brad?" asked Councill. "Work. Need a hand?" "They's plenty to do--but I'm afraid you can't take a hand's place, for a while." "Try me and see." They were all curious to hear of Washington, but he was more inclined to talk of the crops and the cattle. He went to sleep that night in the bare garret with the men, and woke the next morning at sun-rise at sound of Councill's voice calling him, just as he used to do when he was a hired man. "_Hello_, Brad! Roll out!" He went down to breakfast, sloshed his face at the cistern pump and was ready to eat when the men came in. "We live jest the same as ever, Brad," said Mrs. Councill, "you'll haf to put up with it jest as if y' wa'n't a Congressman." "I guess he can stand a few days what we stand all the while," Councill interjected. There was a good deal of banter during the meal about "downing" the Congressman. Bradley's physical pride was roused and he took his place in the field determined to show them their mistake. Night came bringing weariness that was exhaustion, and next morning he was too lame to lift a fork. It emphasized the unnatural inactivity into which he had fallen. He improved physically and by the end of the week was able to pitch hay with the rest. The Judge drove up for him on Saturday afternoon, and found him pitching hay upon the stack behind the wind-break, wet with sweat and covered with timothy bloom. Councill was stacking. "Hello, Congressman," called the Judge. "Get off, 'n take right hold, Judge," said Councill. "A Judge aint no better'n a Congressman, not a darn bit." "I'll take a hand at the table," the Judge replied. "I've had about enough of it," Bradley said to him privately while Councill was putting his team in the barn. "I'm better, but it begins to seem like a waste of time." They drove home that night through the still, warm, star-lit air, like father and son in slow talk of the future.