program ended and new groups began forming, he moved through the crowd toward where she was standing beside Jennie Stokes, helping to count noses before bringing in bowls of oyster stew. But Ruby Engel had also been watching-both Nan and Tom. With her arm hooked firmly in the reluctant Myrtle's and with Bill Ridge in tow, she blocked his progress.

"Oh, hello, Tom." Ruby grinned maliciously. "Say, I bet you're starved! You take care of Myrtle while Bill an' me goes into the kitchen an' brings somethin' out." She left him anchored to Myrtle. Tom saw Harvey approach Nan and was near enough to hear him propose:

"I'll saddle Gray Dog after supper an' ride home with you?"

"All right, Harvey; I'll tell Aunty."

Desperate, Tom determined to speak. Muttering an excuse to Myrtle, he followed Nan and Jennie Stokes to the kitchen.

"Can't I help, Jennie?" he begged, flushing under the autumn oakleaf tan of his cheeks.

"Sure," Jennie agreed, "but don't try to carry more'n one bowl at a time!" She vanished from the kitchen with a loaded tray. Tom stepped in front of Nan as she attempted to follow.

"Nan," he pleaded swiftly, "won't you let me ride home with you?" The flash of color that swept her cheeks was Nan's only acknowledgment of Tom's power to stir her heart. She answered formally:

"Thank you, Mr. Winger, but Harvey's taking me home."

"When can I see you, Nan?" he urged.

"You see me now, don't you?" she gibed.

"Oh, you know what I mean!" He spoke roughly, impatient of her simple fencing tactics. Nan's eyes flamed.

"Do you think Ruby would approve?" The sarcasm sprang involuntarily to her lips; it wasn't at all what she had meant to say.

Tom answered angrily:

"I don't give a damn what she thinks!"

"Oh!" Nan's perverse desire to hurt him drove her on. "Maybe you've stopped getting drunk, too, and making a show of yourself?"

"Say," he flared, coming close to her, "maybe you think I've been robbin' banks?" His face was gray, his grin ghastly, born of his hurt.

"Never speak to me again!" Nan cried, just as Jennie came back.

"I think we don't need you any more, Tom," Jennie said.

"I guess that's right," he agreed harshly, and walked out of the back door to mount his horse and ride furiously away, cursing himself as he rode for a blundering fool. A bitterness rose in his throat and his tongue seemed too thick for fluent expression of his misery.

The quarrel left Nan with a pounding heart, a feeling of frustration. Tom had been cruel, rough, had

tried to dominate her; she would never think of him again. The breach between them was definite. She would not be humiliated and distressed by Tom Winger or any other man!

With a sense of relief and thankfulness, Nan started homeward with Harvey. The very fact that he lacked the allure, the quick, laughing charm of either Tom Winger or Jack Hayes, was in his favor. She felt cheated and betrayed by the type that had attracted her, as she now thought bitterly, so easily! Harvey was different. Silent, modest-and how fine of him. to want to help her father make a fresh start, contrasted with Tom's selfish resentment because she had put her duty to help her dad ahead of the pleasure of going to a dance with him!

So she smiled on Harvey, soothed his hurt feelings over the fiasco he had made as an entertainer.

"I do think, Harvey," she said, "there are lots finer things for a man to be than just a smooth talker."

CHAPTER XIX

THE HAYMAN'S LYRICAL MOMENT

T was characteristic of Harvey Stokes that his

I

great moment should come in late September. The

first frosts had browned the grass and curled the ends of the blades, precipitated the first showers of hickory leaves in Thunder Creek bottom. Out on the broad stretches of cut-over prairie, dotted with multitudinous ricks like the tents of a vast army, prairie chickens perched on the widespread arms of bullrakes, and mowing machines stood rusting. In the small creek bottom fields, corn stalks had turned from brilliant green to light gray and their pendent ears had hardened with the black-brown crisping of the silk. A lop-sided moon rose in their faces as he and Nan rode in the wake of Will Dunkin's rattling wagon. "I like September an' October. Don't you, Nan?" Harvey remarked abruptly.

"Especially? I don't know. Why, Harvey?" She was interested.

"Things seem kind of peaceful," he explained vaguely, sweeping an arm about. Nan caught his mood.

"That's so, isn't it? You don't hear the birds by day or the frogs by night." She laughed softly.

"Only the crickets in the grass. . . . And things have stopped growing-not that they're noisy!"

"It's harvest time, Nan. I guess that's why I like it. Did you ever think of the millions of people that live because days like these come, when things ripen-"

"Millions that would starve," Nan interrupted, "unless we gathered and baled and shipped. Yes, I've thought of it; but what makes you speak of it now?"

"Well, I was wonderin' to-night if I was any use in the world. I'm dumb an' awkward; can't dance an' don't fly around with the young folks an' mix up with people like Vergil does or that Winger fellow." He paused, and Nan remained silent. "I got to thinkin' I was an old stick-in-the-mud, wonderin' what I was good for. The best I could make out for myself, an' I guess you'll laugh at me, Nan, was that I help to gather the harvest-even if it's mostly only the hay harvest."

Nan's quick response was heartening, thrilling; it waked in him the sense of his importance in the web of life that was unrolling under their eyes.

"Oh, Harvey," she cried, "what a lot that is! You help feed the cattle and the horses of those who feed the world—all of the millions that work and play and dance and make laws. Seems like a lot to me."

Harvey shoved his hat back on his head, and faced the moonlight with an expanding smile as he went on: "Girls don't generally understand my ideas, an' I