Perhaps it was this little insight which Keefer gave us into his anxiety and the reason for it that keyed us up to the effort we were to make during the next three days. I have always held that any man who is worth his pay works for something more than his pay, and certainly for the next seventy-two hours pay was the last thing in our minds. We had to beat the frost-fiend that was crouching somewhere in the low mists of a moonlit night, waiting to sweep down and ruin this vast, defenceless field of wheat that stood nodding complacently in the harvest sun, all unconscious of the enemy that threatened it. That was before the days of the general use of the tractor, and the horses could not work day and night, or I am sure we should have followed them, stooking by the white light of the moon that filled the heavens with a brilliance almost like that of the day. In the middle of the afternoon Nellie Keefer would drive out with a horse and buggy and bring us a lunch of sandwiches and tea, and the few minutes during which we would sit in the shade of a stook piled high for that purpose while Nellie helped us from her basket and filled and refilled our cups were occasions to be remembered. She was a rather winsome girl, was Nellie; quite without the idealism which made Jean one girl in a million, but possessed of a sturdy and practical ability and a very adequate supply of self-confidence. "Nellie's a chip off the old block," her mother had said one day when the girl had wrestled a refractory mustang into submission. We had stood by and watched the fight, keeping out of it at Nellie's express command. We were left to infer that, in Mrs. Keefer's figure of speech, Mr. Keefer was the old block. Well, we won. It was stark moonlight on Friday night, possibly ten o'clock or later, when the binder blades at last ran free at the end of the last remaining ribbon of yellow wheat. For a day and a half, by superhuman efforts, we had been overtaking the lead which we had allowed the binders for the sake of efficiency in stooking, and once again when the packers clattered idly above the last half sheaf Jack yanked it from the knotter and flung it to me where I stood waiting to receive it. Then we trudged homeward, tired but victorious. And it didn't freeze, after all. By eleven o'clock a cloud loomed up in the west, and a wind began to lash the oat field. By twelve the rays of the moon struggled but faintly through a curtain of mist. At dawn the thermometer still showed two degrees above freezing. When we had finished with Mr. Keefer he paid us off and told us where we would be sure to get a job threshing. We shook hands all round, and I think I shook hands with Nellie twice, and I remember she said something about calling in if ever I passed that way, and even suggested that she and Harry might drive over to Fourteen next summer and pay us a visit, for I had told her, of course, of Jean and Marjorie. Oh, well, these things happen. . . . .