The strip of corn land ran along the side of a great field; at the upper end of it was a field-corner thicket of young maples and walnut saplings, the children of a great nut-tree that marked the boundary. Once, when Betsey Lane found herself alone near this shelter at the end of her row, the other planters having lagged behind beyond the rising ground, she looked stealthily about and then put her hand inside her gown and for the first time took out the money that Mrs. Strafford had given her. She turned it over and over with an astonished look; there were new bank-bills for a hundred dollars. Betsey gave a funny little shrug of her shoulders, came out of the bushes and took a step or two on the narrow edge of turf, as if she were going to dance; ＿＿（21）＿＿ . She had seen the top of Peggy Bond's head over the knoll, and now Peggy herself came entirely into view, gazing upward to the skies, and stumbling more or less, but counting the corn by touch and twisting her head about anxiously to gain advantage over her uncertain vision. Betsey made a friendly, inarticulate little sound as they passed; she was thinking that somebody said once that Peggy's eyesight might be remedied if she could go to Boston to the hospital; ＿＿（22）＿＿ . Betsey Lane's brown old face suddenly worked with excitement, ＿＿（23）＿＿ . The high spring wind of the morning had quite fallen; it was a lovely May afternoon. The woods about the field to the northward were full of birds, ＿＿（24）＿＿ . Two of the men had finished their hoeing, and were busy with the construction of a scarecrow; they knelt in the furrows, chuckling and looking over some forlorn, discarded garments. It was a time-honored custom to make the scarecrow resemble one of the Poor-House family; this year they intended to have Mrs. Lavina Dow protect the field in effigy; ＿＿（25）＿＿ . Behind the men was the foundation for this rustic attempt at statuary -- an upright stake and bar in the form of a cross. This stood on the highest part of the field, and as the men knelt near it and the quaint figures of the corn-planters went and came, the scene gave a curious suggestion of foreign life. It was not like New England; the presence of the rude cross appealed strangely to the imagination.