"'Straight to the tree his sanguine spires he rolled, And curled around in many a winding fold. The topmost branch a mother-bird possessed; Eight callow infants filled the mossy nest; Herself the ninth: the serpent as he hung Stretched his black jaws, and crashed the crying young: While hovering near, with miserable moan, The drooping mother wailed her children gone. The mother last, as round the nest she flew, Seized by the beating wing, the monster slew.'" "Bravo!" cried Leonard. "I am now quite reconciled to your four years at college. Heretofore I had thought you had passed through it as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego passed through the fiery furnace, without even the smell of fire upon their garments, but I now at last detect a genuine Greek aroma." "I think Burt's quotation very pat," said Amy, "and I could not have believed that anything written so long ago would apply so marvellously to what I have seen to-day." "Marvellously pat, indeed," said Leonard. "And since your quotation has led to such a nice little pat on your classical back, Burt, you must feel repaid for your long burning of the midnight oil." Burt flushed slightly, but he turned Leonard's shafts with smiling assurance, and said: "Amply repaid. I have ever had an abiding confidence that my education would be of use to me at some time." The long days grew hot, and often sultry, but the season brought unremitting toil. The click of the mowing-machine, softened by distance, came from field after field. As the grain in the rye grew plump and heavy, the heads drooped more and more, and changed from a pale yellow to the golden hue that announced the hour of harvest. In smooth and level fields the reaping-machine also lightened and expedited labor, but there was one upland slope that was too rough for anything except the old-fashioned cradle. On a breezy afternoon Amy went out to sketch the harvesters, and from the shade of an adjacent tree to listen to the rhythmical rush and rustle as the blade passed through the hollow stocks, and the cradle dropped the gathered wealth in uniform lines. Almost immediately the prostrate grain was transformed into tightly girthed sheaves. How black Abram's great paw looked as he twisted a wisp of straw, bound together the yellow stalks, and tucked under the end of his improvised rope!