nd itself. But he certainly was cheaply rented if the condition of
the farm was looked at. In the course of so many long years of careful
farming he had got his place into such a state of cultivation that it
could stand two or three bad seasons without much deterioration. The same
bad seasons quite spoiled the land of such of his neighbours as had relied
upon a constant application of stimulants to the soil. The stimulating
substances being no longer applied, as they could not afford to buy them,
the land fell back and appeared poor.

Farmer M---, of course, grumbled at the weather, but the crops belied his
lips. He was, in fact, wealthy--not the wealth that is seen in cities, but
rich for a countryman. He could have started both his sons in business
with solid capital. Yet he drank small beer which the reapers despised,
and drove about in a rusty old gig, with thousands to his credit at that
old country bank. When he got home that afternoon, he carefully put away
some bags of coin for the wages of the men, which he had been to fetch,
and at once started out for the rickyard, to see how things were
progressing. So the Honourable on the tall four-in-hand saluted with
marked emphasis the humble gig that pulled right out of the road to give
him the way, and the Lady Blanche waved her hand to the dowdy in the dusty
black silk with her sweetest smile. The Honourable, when he went over the
farm with his breechloader, invariably came in and drank a glass of the
small beer. The Lady Blanche, at least once in the autumn, rode up,
alighted, and drank one glass of the home-made wine with the dowdy. Her
papa, the landlord, was an invalid, but he as invariably sent a splendid
basket of hot-house grapes. But Farmer M---- was behind the age.

Had he looked over the hedge in the evening, he might have seen a row of
reapers walking down the road at the sudden sound of a jingling bell
behind them, open their line, and wheel like a squad, part to the right
and part to the left, to let the bicycle pass. After it had gone by they
closed their rank, and trudged on toward the village. They had been at
work all day in the uplands among the corn, cutting away with their hooks
low down the yellow straw. They began in the early morning, and had first
to walk two miles or more up to the harvest field. Stooping, as they
worked, to strike low enough, the hot sun poured his fierce rays upon
their shoulders and the backs of their necks. The sinews of t