off in the bushes an owl hooted. The girls
sat listless, leaning against each other. The
long fingers of the sun touched their foreheads.

Presently we saw a curious thing: There
were no clouds, the sun was going down in a
limpid, gold-washed sky. Just as the lower
edge of the red disc rested on the high fields
against the horizon, a great black figure sud-
denly appeared on the face of the sun. We
sprang to our feet, straining our eyes toward
it. In a moment we realized what it was. On
some upland farm, a plough had been left
standing in the field. The sun was sinking just
behind it. Magnified across the distance by
the horizontal light, it stood out against the
sun, was exactly contained within the circle of
the disc; the handles, the tongue, the share --
black against the molten red. There it was,
heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun.

Even while we whispered about it, our
vision disappeared; the ball dropped and
dropped until the red tip went beneath the
earth. The fields below us were dark, the sky
was growing pale, and that forgotten plough
had sunk back to its own littleness somewhere
on the prairie.

[[279]]

p278 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p279w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p280

v?