The rest of the night I lay preternaturally awake, hearing the snoring and murmuring of my fellows in the mow ... hearing the horses as they crunched and whickered ... all the noises of the outside night came in at the open door of the mow. Even the hay began to annoy me as it continually rustled in my ear. I took my blanket and went to lie on the hard ground, under the water waggon. There I heard the multitudinous insects of the night, and the whippoorwill. Ordinarily I do not have an appetite for breakfast. That morning I thought I would eat little, but I ended by devouring six eggs, two dozen pancakes, drinking three cups of coffee ... all of which immediately lay like a lump of rock in me.... No, I could not keep it up! It was too much of an effort, such frightful labour, for sixteen hours of the day. But I thought of the old man who had jeered at me, and I trudged a-field with the rest, my fork slung over my shoulder ... sore ... I ached in every muscle ... muscles I never knew existed before talked to me with their little voices of complaint. But after the first load I began to be better.... And by noon I was singing and whistling irrepressibly. "You'll do ... but you'll have to put a hat on or you'll drop with sun-stroke," Bonton remarked. "I never wear a hat." "All right. It's your funeral, not mine," and the boss walked away. * * * * * "Have a nip and fortify yourself against the sun ... that's the way to do," suggested the old driver. He proffered his whiskey flask. "Nope ... I've plenty of water to drink." The water boy kept trailing about with his brown jug. I tipped it up to my mouth and drank and drank ... I drank and drank and worked and worked and sweated and sweated ... the top of my head perspired so that it felt cool in the highest welter of heat. In the hot early afternoon I saw the old man lying under a tree. "What's the matter?" --"too hot!" "Where's your whiskey now?" --"'tain't the whiskey. _That_ keeps a fellow up ... it's because I'm old, not young, like you," he contested stubbornly. * * * * * These men that I worked with were unimaginably ignorant. One night we held a heated argument as to whether the stars were other worlds and suns, or merely lights set in the sky to light the world of men by ... which latter, the old man maintained, was the truth, solemnly asserting that the Bible said so, and that all other belief was infidelity and blasphemy. So it was that, each evening, despite the herculean labour of the day, we drew together and debated on every imaginable subject.... * * * * *