Nearly every day she finished her own work early--the cooking, the butter making, the cheese making--and came out to the field to help rake and load the hay.

The old Squire has often told me that, except at scythe work, grandmother Ruth was the best helper he had ever had, for at that time she was quick, lithe and strong and understood the work as well as any man.

Later when they were in prosperous circumstances she gave up doing so much work out of doors; but still she enjoyed going to the hayfield, and even after we young folks had gone home to live she made it her custom to lay the last load of hay and ride to the barn on it just to show that she could do it still.

She was now sixty-four years old, however, and had grown stout, so stout indeed that to us youngsters she looked rather venturesome on a load of hay.

On the day of my narrative, we had the last of the grass in the south field "mown and making" on the ground.