122 NOTES ON FIELDS AND CATTLE. 



Time and steam will wait for no man, and so, with 

 a short interval for dinner, the earnest work proceeds. 

 Men and boys, ducks, chickens, pigs, and a dog or two 

 on duty to look after the mice (which will, somehow or 

 other, get into stacks, being probably for the most part 

 transported thither in the corn-bundles from the 

 field), — all are busy as bees. 



And now the last close-matted, hot-pressed sheaves 

 are pitched into the well ; the guards draw breath as 

 they feel that another day is done, carefully wiping 

 their eyes, which are almost closed up with the dust, 

 and smoothing round their necks, so rough from the 

 chaff-cloud in which they have been toiling ; while 

 the sacks are being shaken into shape and solidity, 

 and their necks tied up, as the haulier starts for the 

 horse and waggon to convey them off to the barn-floor, 

 or, if for home use, to be measured at once into the 

 granary-bins. Then a boy rakes back the chaff, and 

 another bundles together the grain deposited in the 

 sail upon the ground. 



The thatcher meanwhile has been busy getting 

 together the spars from the pool, where they were 

 put to soak, so as to bend without breaking, and the 

 rolls of ready-made thatch from the barn, as two or 

 three others pull the stack into shape. And now 

 four men are up on the ready ladders, and at once 

 the handy strips are rolled out along and tacked in a 

 trice to the sloping side of the roof, one over the 

 other, as tiles — for the lurid light across the western 

 horizon shows that we can put no faith in the 

 morrow. 



To finish, the bailiff's wife comes mysteriously 



