So far he had not noticed me; but now he turned my way, lifting himself upon his elbow, and fixing his sunken, burning eyes on mine, while the white hairs of his beard mingled with the blades of grass. "You're hired out to Jim, ain't ye?" Jim was his designation of Mr. Hill. "Yes," I said. "What's he payin' you?" I told him. Mr. Hill was squirming in nervous discomfort. "What's your name?" I gave it him. "Where are you come from?" "Connecticut." "Connecticut? That's down South, ain't it?" "No, that's down East." "Was you raised there?" I do not know into what particulars of my history and of my antecedents this process might have forced me had not the heifer come to my relief. She was a beautiful creature, with a clean sorrel coat, and wide, liquid, mischievous eyes; and as she ran daintily over the turf at the side of the lane, saucily tossing her head, you knew that she was closely calculating every chance of dodging the gawky country boy who, breathing hard, lunged after her. Without a word of parting, and as abruptly as he came, the old man was gone to head her off in the right direction at the mouth of the lane. And so he disappeared, as strange a human being as the world holds, living tremendously a life of strenuous endeavor, yet Godless and hopeless and loveless in it all, except for the greedy love of gain, which holds him in miserable bondage, as he works his life away. It was soon after supper that Mr. Hill and I sat down together on the platform of the pump. There was little movement in the air, and it was very mild for the twenty-seventh of September. As the stars appeared, they shone upon us through a mellow warmth, like that of summer, in which they seem magically near, and one feels their calm companionship in human things. "And you've made up your mind to go in the morning?" Mr. Hill began. "Yes," I said, "I must be off. I am truly sorry to go. But you surprise me by what you tell me of the difficulty in the country of getting men to work. One hears so much about 'the unemployed,' that any demand for labor, which remains unsupplied, seems to me an anomalous condition."[A] "That's a big question," he said, with a deep sigh, as he leant back against the pump and looked at me out of blue eyes that were gray and keen in the starlight. "It reminds me of what we used to call a hard example in arithmetic in the district school when I was a boy. There's a good many things you've got to take account of, if you work it out right, and there's a good many chances of mistake, and a mistake goes hard with your answer. I haven't worked this sum and I haven't seen it worked, but I've studied it a good while, and I think I know how to do parts of it."