Over John-James’s face came a gleam of interest.  “A chain-harrow?” he repeated; “I’ve long wanted one o’ they.  Us allus has to take the yard-gate off its hinges and weave furze in and out of it and drag that over the ground.”

“Well, now you’ve got a real chain-harrow and won’t have to do that any more.  I tell you what it is, John-James, I want you and me between us to make this the finest farm in the country; I don’t want Archelaus to sneer at us when he comes home and say how much better he could have run it.  Of course, I can’t do it without you; but if you’ll only help....”

John-James held silence for a space.  Then he said: 

“I’ve allus said as how us wanted carts, ’stead of carr’n all our furze and the butter and everything as goes in or out upon they harses and lil’ dunkies.  And gates ... if us could have a few more gates to the place ’stead of thrawing the hedges up and down all our days....  It’ll cost money, but what you do put into the land you get out of the land.  Same as weth cows.”

It was a long speech for John-James, and he paused with his countenance suffused a deep purplish hue.  Ishmael seized his hand and wrung it with a sudden young gust of enthusiasm that he could not control.

“You’ll help.  I know you will.  Oh, we’ll pull the old place up yet.  We’ll make such a thing of it....”

But John-James had withdrawn his hand limply.  “Go maken it so fine it’ll be a pretty place for gentry, s’pose,” he said; “be shamed to see I about the place then, I reckon.”

Ishmael laughed joyously at him.  “Don’t be an ass, John-James,” he said; and it was the first time he had been able to meet any little speech of the kind without strain.  John-James stood at ease, and slowly some faint trace of a change of expression appeared on his immobile features.

“I reckon thee’ll do, lad,” was all he said; but Ishmael felt his heart give an upleap of triumph; he knew he had made his first conquest.  As he and John-James went into breakfast side by side he felt quite equal to meeting Annie unperturbed.  But he was not to be called on to make trial of his stoicism, as Annie hardly spoke to him; but with a thrill of emancipation he realised that his mother’s tongue no longer held terror for him—­merely the annoyance of a persistent fly.

As long as he lived Ishmael never forgot the exquisite moment when he broke his first furrow on his own land.  Harvest gathered is a wonder and a release from strain; sowing and tending of seed and young crops is sweet, but ploughing holds more of romance than all the rest.  It is the beginning, the fresh essay with soil that has become once more savage; it is the earliest essential of man’s conquest of Nature; his taming of her from a wild mistress to a fruitful wife.