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wealthy women who routinely walked their properties, checking on livestock and out buildings. Of course, they would be with their foreman or husband, but still, not every woman liked to be holed away indoors completely. Her speech was informal and at the same time a bit bold. In most cases, a woman of her position would speak to him in a different tone, since he was only a working man. Yet she spoke to him almost as a counterpart, an equal. He had to admit he liked it. She seemed a bit addled, and her replies to him were a bit slow. Perhaps it was due to tiredness or the fact that she had fallen. Whatever the reason, Miss Bradenton was different than any other guest that had been on the property.
    He pulled on his work clothes and boots. It was time to get to his chores. Normally, his life was routine. Work, eat, rest. He had a day off on Sundays and trips to town with the maids to fetch supplies. This was his station in life and he accepted it. What more could a working man want?
    He thought back to what he had done as a young man. Working on fishing boats on Lake Michigan was rough, but the pay was decent. In the wintertime, when everything iced over, he found a job working in a Milwaukee brewery. After two years of that, his eyesight had begun to falter, but just on the left side. He had gone to a doctor and all he could say he was sorry, but it was something called a cataract and he would have to learn to live with it. He reached up to rub his patch and remembered the anger he felt that day. The doctor kindly suggested that Royce might want to consider wearing an eye patch to stop curious stares. Royce did it and actually found it to be a relief since the blurring was annoying and he found he could compensate over time.
    Then two summers ago, there was a fire at the brewery and the owners said it would be shut down for a number of months until everything was repaired and back in running order. They told all the employees to take time off and return in the fall and they would rehire the original workers first. Being frugal, Royce had saved most of his salary and journeyed back to southern Michigan to visit friends, and his mother, whom he had not seen in two years. She had liked Royce being home again and said she heard they would soon be looking to hire a stable hand at Fallow Field farms.
    Royce was hesitant to go, but she told him the job would include free living quarters. So Royce decided to check on it, and found the current stableman to be elderly and in failing health. He was only staying on, he told Royce, until Mrs. Bradenton found a substitute. He showed Royce around a bit and described the job. Royce said he had some experience with horses, from working with the draft horses at the brewery. The old man told him there was nothing to it; it was the same when you worked around any large farm animal. You fed and watered them, kept the stables clean, and maintained the tack and buggies. Naturally, there would be incidental handyman work, fence mending, and ground keeping. He told Royce he would recommend him if he was seriously interested, and Royce said he was.
    Within two weeks time, he had a new job and a tidy cottage to live in. He preferred to keep his cottage simple and rather bare, but his mother insisted on giving him decorations and assorted cook pots and bedding. Though he protested and told his mother he had lived in a sparse boarding house while in Milwaukee, she insisted on arranging his cottage into something comfortable and livable.
    Besides, he loved Fallow Field. It was composed of acres of prime fruit orchards and vineyards. The entire property was bordered on the western side by the slow moving Saint Joe River and on the northern side by a deep ravine. To the east and south were other smaller farms owned by local fruit farmers that raised pears, currents and plums. Fallow Field farm lay a few miles from Saint Joseph, a pleasant drive by buggy in daylight.
    He learned his job quickly and liked the