eties of the task, but he pushed the women's
officious hands aside, and by the aid of his toothless but bone-hard
gums pulled the knot to successfully, and the bunch became the "Neck."
Then he set off, followed by the rest of the folk, to the highest field
under grass, cresting the slope behind Cloom, the field that had been
ploughed earth when the old Squire's dying eyes looked on it from his
bedroom window.

The last of the day still held the world, and from the western rim the
sunset beat up on to one vast level stretch of cloud that nearly covered
the sky, drenching it with rose-coloured light which refracted to the
earth, steeping everything in one warm glow. The stubble stood up like
thin straight flames from a soil that showed wine-coloured, and the
green of leaf and pasture was turned by the warmth of the light to that
tender but brilliantly vivid emerald to which it wakes in the gleam of a
lantern at night. All colour was intensified, though all was suffused
with the triumphant rose, which steeped sky and air and earth till they
seemed infused with some impalpable wine; and the procession moved
through an atmosphere full of refractions and bright edges afloat in the
tender glow.

Melchisedec Baragwaneth took his stand in the middle of the field beside
the tall monolith, and his followers made a huge circle about him.
Jacka's John-Willy staggered round with a firkin of cider, and each man
set his hands about its body and took a long drink. Then Melchisedec
Baragwaneth bent slowly down, holding the Neck towards the ground, and
all the labourers bowed low over their billhooks. Still more slowly the
old man straightened himself, raising his arms till he held the bunch of
corn high above his head, like some sylvan priest elevating the Host.
The billhooks, which a moment before had lain like shining crescents on
the grass, went flashing up into blackness against the glow of the sky,
and from each man came a great shout:

_"A nack! A nack! A nack! We hav'en! We hav'en! We hav'en!"_

Three times the rite was performed, and the rose-light, that so soon
dies, had faded away, though no one could have told the actual moment of
its passing. A vibrant dusk, that to eyes still glamour-ridden seemed
full of millions of little, pricking points of light, permeated the
world, and in their harmonious-coloured clothes the people mingled with
the soft grey-green of the pasture, only their faces and hands gleamed
out a few tones