28 Next to the Ground 



ing, as the others were, for wheat. Rough 

 old sward requires a year under plough to fit 

 it for small grain, or if badly beset with 

 broom-sedge, the pest of all south-country 

 grassland, two years. The sedge stalks are 

 so stiff and glassy, the roots so tussocky, they 

 make the soil too thirsty for either wheat or 

 mowing grass. Arable land has many capri- 

 ces of condition. Earable land, old English 

 law writes it, perhaps with regard to eared 

 crops, as wheat, rye, and barley, which grow 

 only where ploughs have run. 



The subsoiler was well up, though his oxen 

 could not step with the cross-matched team. 

 The oxen were big red fellows with tapering 

 horns, a yard in spread from tip to tip. They 

 held their heads low, and went so slowly Dan 

 said it made you tired to watch them. But 

 the chain which drew the deep-running invis- 

 ible ploughshare never slackened. The share 

 turned nothing, threw up nothing. Lifted for 

 unclogging after it had touched a water-vein, 

 it showed as an uncanny long-shanked thing, 

 well-scoured, and shining in the sun, with a 

 clot of very bright red clay under the tip. 

 The clay upon the long shank was of a warm 

 chocolate yellow, very unlike the topsoil, which 

 was almost black with unwholesome faint 

 green scum at the surface between the grass 

 roots. 



