Page:Frank Owen - Rare Earth, 1931.djvu/251

 First Jethro made a survey of the fields. Linda had walked with him over the land on the preceding evening and he was quite able to remember the boundaries. There was a tree that swayed perilously in the breeze as though in danger of falling at any moment. It had been struck by lightning at some time in the dim past. The trunk had been split from root to top. The branches were as bleak and bare as though it were a tree in winter. No sign of a leaf was there anywhere upon it It was a gaunt ghost-tree, cold, dead. Jethro decided that he would remove it at the first opportunity.

It was pleasant to walk across the fields in the early morning and to think that in a few weeks all this soil would have been broken, under cultivation once again, bending to his will. There is a certain joy in planting, a rare satisfaction.

Down near the South Road he came upon a man who was leaning idly on a fence post, smiling cheerily.

"Good-morning to you, stranger!" he cried.