This speech roused me. My honour, my manhood were at stake. I no longer wanted to be the duffer who had to sit at the bottom corner of the table, who dared not put a word in edgewise, who, if he knew of anything that had happened, was free to go and talk it over with the sheep and calves outside. I had the most ambitious views; I wanted to be big and strong and independent, like the farm-labourer. And behold, the higher a man aims, the taller he grows! I drove the plough and cut a passable furrow. The earth-worms, disturbed by the plough, lifted their heads in surprise and looked up to see who was ploughing to-day! My father's fields had tough, yellowish-red earth, interwoven with grass-roots; and the sods formed an endless gut, and were hardly once in a way interrupted throughout the tract of land to be ploughed. I was glad of that, for it made the plough remain always evenly in position, and the furrow became more regular than any pond-digger's work. But my father was not so glad; he would rather have had black, soft sods: "Black earth, white bread!" says the proverb. When I was driving the plough across the field for the third time, I took a peep to see how high the sun stood in the sky. Alas, that clock had stopped! There were clouds in front of it. Suppose God should be angry and refuse to let it become noon to-day!... It seemed a long time before mother, when dinner was ready, appeared in the loft at the top of the house, as my grandmother had done before her, put two fingers to her mouth, and sent forth the shrill, peculiar whistle which I knew so well. I let go the handles and confessed that mother had never whistled so musically before. Then came dinner. I took good care not to wipe the earth from my hands, for even this crust gave me a certain air; I was no longer the duffer, I was the ploughman, I enjoyed equal rights with the labourers. I sat down beside the head man and did my best to talk in a weighty fashion. They spoke of my performance; then I was silent, for my performance spoke for itself. It is a small incident in one's youth, it is hardly big enough to be worth mentioning; but, for the farmer, it is a great and momentous day when he puts his hand to the plough for the first time--it is a sacred act. The sword, the Cross, are objects of respect; and I look upon the plough also as a symbol of the redemption of the world. The grey earth-dust which clung to my hands that time, and with which I went in to dinner--I have not wiped it off to this day--was to me what the golden pollen-dust is to the bee. And so I may be permitted to add that, in that same year, I tilled the whole of that field; that my father sowed the seed there with a pious hand; and that, next spring, the corn stood glad and green and glorious. "I haven't seen such a field of corn these ten years past," said my father, when he saw it. XIII The Recruit