Toil of Men Classic Reprint

Excerpt from Toil of Men

Old Gerrit was really in high good humour; with quiet enjoyment and pride, he was mentally calculating the weight of each spadeful, as Dirk with his fine broad swing flung it above him out of the trench. Gerrit was immensely proud of his son's digging powers. Dirk was the only person he cared for in the least, and that merely because of the young man's capacity for silent, uncomplaining, unstinting toil. It put the father in a most excellent humour with himself, to see his son labouring there in the bitter wind.

Half a field's length away Piet also was digging. Piet had not Dirk's stolid, immovable, ox-like strength, and he was digging on an easier bit of ground. He sang, his voice audible from quite a long way off, now sinking, now carried away loud on a gust of wind. Heard close, the voice had a curiously merry note as it rang out in time to the swing of the spade; the words of the song came faintly to old Gerrit across the wintry fields.

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