the stack, stands--the farmer, moustached, and always
upright was he not in the Yeomanry?--dignified in a hard black hat, no
waistcoat, and his working coat so ragged that it would never cling to
him but for pure affection. Between him and the body of the machine are
five more pitch forks, directing the pale flood of raw material. There,
amongst them, is poor Herd, still so sad from his summer loss, plodding
doggedly away. To watch him even now makes one feel how terrible is that
dumb grief which has never learned to moan. And there is George Yeoford,
almost too sober; and Murdon plying his pitchfork with a supernatural
regularity that cannot quite dim his queer brigand's face of dark, soft
gloom shot with sudden humours, his soft, dark corduroys and battered
hat. Occasionally he stops, and taking off that hat, wipes his
corrugated brow under black hair, and seems to brood over his own
regularity.

Down here, too, where I stand, each separate function of the thresher has
its appointed slave. Here Cedric rakes the chaff pouring from the side
down into the chaff-shed. Carting the straw that streams from the
thresher bows, are Michelmore and Neck--the little man who cannot read,
but can milk and whistle the hearts out of his cows till they follow him
like dogs. At the thresher's stern is Morris, the driver, selected
because of that utter reliability which radiates from his broad, handsome
face. His part is to attend the sacking of the three kinds of grain for
ever sieving out. He murmurs: "Busy work, sir!" and opens a little door
to show me how "the machinery does it all," holding a sack between his
knees and some string in his white teeth. Then away goes the sack--four
bushels, one hundred and sixty pounds of "genuines, seconds, or
seed"--wheeled by Cedric on a little trolley thing, to where
George-the-Gaul or Jim-the-Early-Saxon is waiting to bear it on his back
up the stone steps into the corn-chamber.

It has been raining in the night; the ground is a churn of straw and mud,
and the trees still drip; but now there is sunlight, a sweet air, and
clear sky, wine-coloured through the red, naked, beechtwigs tipped with
white untimely buds. Nothing can be more lovely than this late autumn
day, so still, save for the droning of the thresher and the constant
tinny chuckle of the grey, thin-headed Guinea-fowl, driven by this
business away from their usual haunts.

And soon the feeling that I knew would come begins