I climbed to my bed in the haymow that first night.  It was chill enough for the use of my blanket.

I drowsed off, to wake with a jump of all my body from a dream that a giant was pressing down on me, that he had my legs doubled up over me and was breaking them into my breast....

The cramps....

I stood up and rubbed my legs till the taut tendons softened and stretched ... but when I dared bend them the littlest, the tautening and drawing twisted them again.  And so I suffered half the night through, till, in wrathful agony, I stumbled to the watering trough and stood naked-white in the flood of the full moon, rubbing the icy water over my body....

The dutiful house dogs ... barking furiously, the two of them rushed at my apparition as I stood up in the trough and splashed.  They embayed me as a quarry.  I jumped out of the trough and threw stones at them.  They backed from my attack and bit at the stones.  I stepped back in the water and rubbed myself more.  The dogs squatted on their haunches at a safe distance and bayed lugubriously at me and the moon in common.

The rest of the night I lay preternaturally awake, hearing the snoring and murmuring of my fellows in the mow ... hearing the horses as they crunched and whickered ... all the noises of the outside night came in at the open door of the mow.  Even the hay began to annoy me as it continually rustled in my ear.

I took my blanket and went to lie on the hard ground, under the water waggon.  There I heard the multitudinous insects of the night, and the whippoorwill.

Ordinarily I do not have an appetite for breakfast.  That morning I thought I would eat little, but I ended by devouring six eggs, two dozen pancakes, drinking three cups of coffee ... all of which immediately lay like a lump of rock in me....

No, I could not keep it up!  It was too much of an effort, such frightful labour, for sixteen hours of the day.  But I thought of the old man who had jeered at me, and I trudged a-field with the rest, my fork slung over my shoulder ... sore ...  I ached in every muscle ... muscles I never knew existed before talked to me with their little voices of complaint.

But after the first load I began to be better....

And by noon I was singing and whistling irrepressibly.

“You’ll do ... but you’ll have to put a hat on or you’ll drop with sun-stroke,” Bonton remarked.

“I never wear a hat.”

“All right.  It’s your funeral, not mine,” and the boss walked away.

* * * * *

“Have a nip and fortify yourself against the sun ... that’s the way to do,” suggested the old driver.  He proffered his whiskey flask.

“Nope ...  I’ve plenty of water to drink.”

The water boy kept trailing about with his brown jug.  I tipped it up to my mouth and drank and drank ...  I drank and drank and worked and worked and sweated and sweated ... the top of my head perspired so that it felt cool in the highest welter of heat.