"I was ploughing this morning; and this may be our last day before the frost sets in hard," said Mr. Starkley. "What about hitching Peter's mares to a second plow?" "Suit me fine," said Jim. It was a still, bright October afternoon, with a glow in the sunshine, a smell of fern and leaf in the air and a veil of blue mist on the farther hills. Frosts had nipped the surface of things lightly a score of times but had not yet struck deep. Jim Hammond, in a pair of Peter's long-legged boots, guided a long plough behind Peter's black and sorrel mares. The mares pulled steadily, and the bright plough cut smoothly through the sod of the old meadow. Over against the fir woods on the far side of the meadow John Starkley went back and forth behind his grays. Jim rested frequently at the end of a furrow, for he was not in the pink of condition. He noticed, for the first time in his life, the faint perfume of the turned loam and torn grass roots. He liked it. His furrows, a little uneven at first, became straighter and more even until they were soon almost perfect. As the red sun was sinking toward the western forests, Emma appeared, climbing over the rail fence from a grove of young red maples. She carried something under one arm. She waved a hand to her father but came straight to Jim. He stopped the mares midway the furrow. "I made these gingernuts myself," said Emma, holding out an uncovered tin box to him. "See, they are still hot. Have some." He accepted two and found them very good. The girl looked over his work admiringly and told him she had never seen straighter furrows except a few of Peter's ploughing. Then she warned him that in half an hour she would blow a horn for him to stop and went across to her father with what was left of the gingernuts. Hammond went on unwinding the old sod into straight furrows until the horn blew from the house. After supper he played cribbage with Mr. Starkley; and that night he slept soundly and without dreaming. He awoke early enough to do his share of the feeding and milking before breakfast. The ploughs worked again that day, but the next night brought a frost that held tight. The days went by peacefully for Jim Hammond. He never went on the highway or away from Beaver Dam and Peter's place. Sometimes, when people came to the house, he sat by himself in his room upstairs. He did his share of all the barn work, twice a week helped Mrs. Starkley and the girls with the churning and cut cordwood and fence rails every day. He never talked much, but at times his manner was almost cheerful. And so the days passed and October ran into November. Snow came and letters from France and England. The family treated him like one of themselves, with never a question to embarrass him or a word to hurt him. He heard news of his family occasionally, but never tried to see them. "They think I am somewhere in the States, hiding--or that's what father thinks," he said to Flora. "Some day I'll write to mother--from France."