Their team stood stamping impatiently on the virgin sod, as Leland came up foremost of the long line of men and beasts. He was sitting upright on the driving-seat of a great machine, dressed in an old blue-jean shirt that was open at his sunburnt throat, with a wide grey hat on his head. His arms were bare to the elbow, corded, hard, and brown, and his face was the deep colour of the clods that rolled away in long waves beneath the three-fold shares. Four splendid horses plodded in front of him, and the stain of the soil and the same stamp of enduring strength was on him and them. He pulled the team up, and, springing down, came towards the waggon with his hat in his hand. "You are going to the railroad?" he said. "Yes," said Mrs. Annersly. "Carrie wants some things, but I understand we are to stay the night at Mrs. Custer's on the way." "Well," said Leland, "I may see you there. There are some new harrows and seeders I have to wire about, but I don't expect to get in until daylight to-morrow." "You are going to drive all night?" "I may get an hour's sleep before I go. You see, I have to be back by noon to-morrow. Our summer is short, and there is a good deal to do. The grain that goes in late is quite often frozen." He pointed as if in explanation to the great sweep of furrows that ran back narrowing all the way to where Prospect nestled like a doll's house beneath its bluff. With a great trampling, two other teams came up just then. They went by amidst a ripping and crackling of fibres as the prairie opened up beneath the gleaming shares, and Leland nodded with a little quiet smile. "Oh, yes," he said; "little time to do it in, and a good deal to do. Some of us were born to feel that way." "Not all," said Eveline Annersly. "There are, as you know, men who waste their substance to while the day away. You are not that sort. Perhaps it's fortunate for you." Leland smiled again. "I don't quite know. There's a great order and system that runs things, though I can't quite get the hang of it--I haven't time. Every man works in this country, as all Nature does. Those little grasses have been ten thousand years building up the black loam I'm making wheat of. The mallard, the brent goose, and the sandhill crane--you can see them coming up from the south in their skeins and wedges all day long--have to hunt their food from the shores of the Caribbean to the Pole. Well, one feels there must be a balance struck some day, and the men who don't do anything are having the soft things now." He laughed good-humouredly, and stroked one of the horses that turned its head to nibble affectionately at his shoulder. "I'll be sorry for this by and by, but you have a habit of making me give myself away." "Then we will be practical. Are you going to sow all that ploughing?" "I am. I expect to break two hundred acres more. There are folks who want the wheat, and we'll feed the world some day." "But wheat is going down."