When the dew began to fall close after the heat of the day, and the boys came out, each with his scythe to mow in readiness for next day, Isak came in sight close to the house and said: 

“Put away scythes for tonight.  Get out the new horse, you can, and bring him down to the edge of the wood.”

And on that, instead of going indoors to his supper as the others had done already, he turned where he stood and went back the way he had come.

“D’you want the cart, then?” Sivert called after him.

“No,” said his father, and walked on.

Swelling with mystery, full of pride; with a little lift and throw from the knee at every step, so emphatically did he walk.  So a brave man might walk to death and destruction, carrying no weapon in his hand.

The boys came up with the horse, saw the machine, and stopped dead.  It was the first mowing-machine in the wilds, the first in the village—­red and blue, a thing of splendour to man’s eyes.  And the father, head of them all, called out, oh, in a careless tone, as if it were nothing uncommon:  “Harness up to this machine here.”

And they drove it; the father drove.  Brrr! said the thing, and felled the grass in swathes.  The boys walked behind, nothing in their hands, doing no work, smiling.  The father stopped and looked back.  H’m, not as clear as it might be.  He screws up a nut here and there to bring the knives closer to the ground, and tries again.  No, not right yet, all uneven; the frame with the cutters seems to be hopping a little.  Father and sons discuss what it can be.  Eleseus has found the instructions and is reading them.  “Here, it says to sit up on the seat when you drive—­then it runs steadier,” he says.

“Ho!” says his father.  “Ay, ’tis so, I know,” he answers.  “I’ve studied it all through.”  He gets up into the seat and starts off again; it goes steadily now.  Suddenly the machine stops working—­the knives are not cutting at all. “Ptro!  What’s wrong now?” Father down from his seat, no longer swelling with pride, but bending an anxious, questioning face down over the machine.  Father and sons all stare at it; something must be wrong.  Eleseus stands holding the instructions.

“Here’s a bolt or something,” says Sivert, picking up a thing from the grass.

“Ho, that’s all right, then,” says his father, as if that was all that was needed to set everything in order.  “I was just looking for that bolt.”  But now they could not find the hole for it to fit in—­where in the name of wonder could the hole be, now?

And it was now that Eleseus could begin to feel himself a person of importance; he was the man to make out a printed paper of instructions.  What would they do without him?  He pointed unnecessarily long to the hole and explained:  “According to the illustration, the bolt should fit in there.”

“Ay, that’s where she goes,” said his father. “’Twas there I had it before.”  And, by way of regaining lost prestige, he ordered Sivert to set about looking for more bolts in the grass.  “There ought to be another,” he said, looking very important, as if he carried the whole thing in his head.  “Can’t you find another?  Well, well, it’ll be in its hole then, all right.”