"Soh! but it's a queer thing to hear the hum of a wind-storm before the wind comes along; jes' 'sif th're messages going ahead to warn critturs and trees to stand firm. Well, I squinted around, and bymby, as the light grew, far above I seed a something movin', and the noise of its coming grew. 'Twas no bigger'n a umbrella when I fixed it; but it soon spread out, wider and wider, and what was the curiosest, it lengthened out behind like my old concertina. I tell you, I begun to get skeered, for I thought maybe 'twas one o' them water-spouts. Then the light grew stronger and there was a twinkling from the growing column jes' if thousands and thousands o' poplar leaves was stirred by the wind. `'Tis alive,' I said, jumping to my feet, and I scaled down that rock and scooted through the pools, and up over the sand hills to the shelter of the woods. I thought it was one o' them here sea-serpents." "But it was not?" "No sonny; it was a heaven-high column of quail. That's what it were." "Falling from the moon, eh?" "When the head of the column reached the ground, which it did, on the beach the whole length just collapsd like a falling tree, and the whole lot were just scattered along the coast in a twinkling." CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. ABE PIKE AND THE GHON-YA. Old Abe had strolled over to my place to see a new Harvester tried on a good crop of wheat. In the previous reaping season I had been left suddenly in the lurch by my Kaffirs, who had silently vanished in the night for other scenes without a word of explanation, or a single regret for the loss they would put me to, and I determined to be prepared in future for such another vagary. Hence the Harvester, which reaped the corn and bound up the sheaves, aided only by one man and a boy. We were just sweeping clear the last square in the small field when Abe came up and hung himself on the fence, with his back bent like a bow, and his toes hitched under the lower wire. There, all bunched up, he eyed the machine in silence. "Well, Uncle, what do you think of it?" I said, with some pride, as the last sheaf was tossed on one side by the human-like grippers. He looked at me vacantly, then climbed slowly down, examined the sheaf and the tie, and then took a look all round the country. "Things is changing," he said. "Yes; this is the age of progress and electricity." "And snorting steam engines and that there man machine--that thing without a heart, or a stomach, or eyes to see. Where's the good?" "It is a labour-saving machine, and enables me to produce more." "'Tis all vanity, an' foolishness, an laziness--that's what. Laziness and pride," and the old sinner, who never did a fair day's work in a month, wore an air of virtuous indignation as he resumed his seat on the fence.