ning along the meadow, through the neck of the glass, reached the
little thing, and stooped and snatched her into my arms. She was sound
and unfrighted, as I felt with a burst of thankfulness; but, looking
about me, as I turned again to fly, I had near dropped in my tracks for
the sickness and horror I experienced in the nearer neighbourhood of the
apparition. For, though it never raised its head, or changed the steady
swing of its shoulders, I knew that it was aware of and was reaping at
me. Now, I tell you, it was ten yards away, yet the point of the scythe
came gliding upon me silently, like a snake, through the stalks, and at
that I screamed out and ran for my life.

I escaped, sweating with terror; but when I was sped back to the men,
there was all the village collected, and our Vicar to the front, praying
from a throat that rattled like a dead leaf in a draught. I know not what
he said, for the low cries of the women filled the air; but his face was
white as a smock, and his fingers writhed in one another like a knot of
worms.

"The plague is upon us!" they wailed. "We shall be mowed down like ripe
corn!"

And even as they shrieked the Black Reaper paused, and, putting away his
scythe, stooped and gathered up a sheaf in his arms and stood it on end.
And, with the very act, a man--one that had been forward in yesterday's
business--fell down amongst us yelling and foaming; and he rent his
breast in his frenzy, revealing the purple blot thereon, and he passed
blaspheming. And the reaper stooped and stooped again, and with every
sheaf he gathered together one of us fell stricken and rolled in his
agony, while the rest stood by palsied.

But, when at length all that was cut was accounted for, and a dozen of us
were gone each to his judgment, and he had taken up his scythe to reap
anew, a wild fury woke in the breasts of some of the more abandoned and
reckless amongst us.

"It is not to be tolerated!" they cried. "Let us at once fire the corn
and burn this sorcerer!"

And with that, some fire or six of them, emboldened by despair, ran up
into the little field, and, separating, had out each his flint and fired
the crop in his own place, and retreated to the narrow part for safety.

Now the reaper rested on his scythe, as if unexpectedly acquitted of a
part of his labour; but the corn flamed up in these five or six
directions, and was consumed in each to the compass of a single sheaf:
whereat the fire died away. A