A clover mow is a wonderful sleep-compeller.
There are the softness and fragrance, but, sometimes, even with that, he would be wakeful.

To avoid himself, the young man would, at last, go in early evening to the older farmers' homes,--for it was his own country and he knew them all,--and there, with the sons and hired men, pitch quoits in the road before the house.
Quoits is still a game of farmers' sons, and the horseshoe is superior to the quoit of commerce and the town.

The open side affords facility for aggressive feats of cleverness in displacing an opponent's cast, and the corks upon the shoes reduce some sliding chances, and the game has quality.

And Harlson found rather a distraction in the contests.
He found, maybe, distraction, too, in chatting with slim Jenny Bierce, who was a very little girl when he was in the country school, but who had grown into almost a woman, and who was a trifle more refined, perhaps, than most of her associates.

She had a sweetheart, a stalwart young farmer named Harrison Woodell, one of the schoolmates of Harlson's early youth, but she liked to talk with Harlson.