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You’re still young enough, and your old grampa’ll learn you.”
    Most of the way out through the fields, he kept pointing this or that spot out to me, and telling me long stories about what happened there when his father first took the land up from the wilderness, but I didn’t pay any attention to it. I’d been told enough that day—mostly about what a fool boy I was and what my old grampa was going to learn me—and I didn’t want to hear any more. I told myself that I’d stay there till the hay was in if it killed me, but I’d let him do his learning to somebody else. I’d worked for plenty of ranchers, and for market gardeners, too. Any one of them would hire me again, and none of them had ever yelled at me or called me a fool boy. The minute the last forkful of hay was in the barn, I’d start for Colorado.
    All the way up the long hill beside the orchard, I kept thinking about the people I’d go to see as soon as I got back to Colorado, and Grandfather kept on talking. Old Bess was walking along beside him, and he might just as well have been doing his talking to her. To me, it was just sound: like brook water makes in running over stones. At the top of the orchard, he took hold of my arm and pointed toward a field of spindly hay that stretched across the crown of the hill. “Curious,” he said, “that high field yonder. Father and my half-brothers cleared it afore ever I was born. Take heed the wall here! Nary stone bigger’n a sweet punkin. Mark them little cobbles ’mongst the hay! Millions of ’em no bigger’n a goose egg. I cal’late they draw heat from the sun. First field in twenty miles roundabouts to thaw in the spring, and last to freeze up in the fall. Late and early frosts never touches it.”
    I’d heard what he said, but I was still thinking about Colorado, and said, “Too bad it isn’t richer ground.”
    Grandfather jerked his hand off my arm, and snapped, “Ain’t nothing wrong with the soil! Who said there was? Plenty good cow dressing and that little field’ll grow two ton of good timothy hay.”
    “I didn’t mean that I thought there was anything wrong with it,” I said, “and I don’t know very much about dressing. . . . ”
    “Hmfff! Don’t know much about nothing worth while!”
    “Well, I know about strawberries and tomatoes,” I said.
    “What you know about ’em; how to eat ’em?”
    “Yes,” I said, “I know how to eat them. And I worked for a man in Colorado who knew how to raise them. He had a high, warm field for them, and he always got the highest prices because his strawberries and tomatoes were the first ones to ripen in the . . . ”
    “Hmfff! Hmfff! Strawb’ries!” Grandfather exploded. “Time and tarnation! Tomatoes and strawb’ries! Garden sass! Garden sass! Why in thunderation didn’t somebody learn you something worth while?”
    “They did!” I snapped back before I could catch myself.
    “Mind your manners!” Grandfather shouted. Then he reached out and took hold of my arm again, but didn’t take hold hard. “Poor boy! Poor Ralphie!” he said. “Tarnal shame to let a boy grow up so know-nothing. Your old grampa’ll learn you. No, Ralphie, no. This here is hay soil. ’Tain’t good for nothing else. Gorry sakes, we better fetch the cows in afore Millie’s supper gets cold. Ain’t no living with her whenst her victuals gets cold.”
    We’d been walking along the brow of the hill, where it dipped away eastward toward Lisbon Valley. The crown of the hill was to the westward and, as we passed it, I noticed a few cows and calves standing at a pasture gate beyond. Grandfather slipped one arm inside mine. “Ralphie,” he said, “your old grampa’s powerful glad to have you here. The land’s been a-crying for young hands. I done the best I could after Frankie went off to Portland to learn a trade, but I and Old Bess was all alone . . . Levi off a-homesteading in Dakota, the big barn burning flat to the ground, the