over its humped back, widening the
strip of brown between him and the hedge, always with pleasure at sight
of that long rich fold of earth turning over perpetually under the
sideways impact of the blade, turning over till the green turf was
hidden by the brown of the under soil....

The field was not an easy one for the horses by reason of its curve; the
off horse, on the vore, as the part already ploughed is called, dug his
great hoofs firmly in the stiff soil, but the near horse slipped
perpetually on the short turf. Every now and then the plough had to be
stopped while great hunks of granite were hacked out of the earth; then,
with loud cries of encouragement and a cut of the whip, the horses were
urged on again, the flash of their shoes gleaming rhythmically up and
down, up and down, as Ishmael guided the plough behind them. His hands
gripped the handles, the plough clanked, the horses struggled, and the
sound of their hoofs made a dull thud-thud upon the earth; the wind blew
gratefully on his moist brow and on the flanks of the animals; at every
turn the shouts of his voice as he stopped the horses and reversed the
clanking plough went up through the quiet world.

The gulls sat, dazzlingly white, motionless as little headstones, along
the rim where green land met brown vore, then rose and shrieked and
swooped as the clatter began again, dipping in the wake of the new
furrow. And the sun went overhead, making sweating steeds and sweating
man and bright wheels and brighter blade of the plough glisten like
sculptured bronze, while all the time the green was being more and more
swamped, furrow after furrow, by the encroaching brown.

That night Ishmael was sore and stiff, but happy, with a deep physical
content. The next day and the next and on till the last furrow lay
turned along the lower hedge he kept himself at it doggedly, in spite of
aching muscles, driven by a vague feeling that this was his initiation,
his test of knighthood, and that to fail at it, to leave it to other
hands, would augur ill. When, on the sixth night, he washed the sweat
and earth from off his healthily tired body he felt life could hold
nothing sweeter than what it had yielded him in these six days. He had
taken seizen of his land.

CHAPTER IV

THE SHADOW AT THE WINDOW

For nearly three years that content of Ishmael's held--held till the
Parson, who had worked for it, grew ill-pleased. It seemed unnatural
that so young a man s