ten o'clock
Clothing dripping with sweat , arms aching , filled with briers , fingers raw and bleeding , backs broken with the weight of heavy bundles , Haskins and his man toiled on . Tommy drove the harvester , while his father and a hired man bound on the machine . In this way they cut ten acres every day , and almost every night after supper , when the hand went to bed , Haskins returned to the field shocking the bound grain in the light of the moon . Many a night he worked till his anxious wife came out at ten o'clock to call him in to rest and lunch . At the same time she cooked for the men , took care of the children , washed and ironed , milked the cows at night , made the butter , and sometimes fed the horses and watered them while her husband kept at the shocking . No slave in the Roman galleys could have toiled so frightfully and lived , for this man thought himself a free man , and that he was working for his wife and babes . When he sank into his bed with a deep groan of relief , too tired to change his grimy , dripping clothing , he felt that he was getting nearer and nearer to a home of his own , and pushing the wolf of want a little farther from his door .