136 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



Their faces, their gait, nay, the very planting of their 

 heavy shoes' stamp on the earth, are full of the im- 

 portance of this matter. On this the year depends, 

 and the harvest, and all our lives, that the sowing be 

 accomplished in good order, as is meet. Therefore 

 they are in earnest, and do not turn aside to gaze at 

 strangers, like those do who hoe, being of no account. 

 This is a serious matter, needing men of days, little 

 of speech, bub long of experience. So the heavy drill, 

 with its hanging rows of funnels, travels across the 

 field well tended, and there is not one who notes the 

 deep azure of the March sky above the elms. 



Still another step, tracing the seasons backwards, 

 brings in the steam-plough. When the spotted arum 

 leaves unfold on the bank, before the violets or the 

 first celandine, while the " pussies " hang on the hazel, 

 the engines roll into the field, pressing the earth into 

 barred ruts. The massive wheels leave their imprint, 

 the footsteps of steam, behind them. By the hedges 

 they stand, one on either side, and they hold the field 

 between them with their rope of iron. Like the claws 

 of some pre-historic monster, the shares rout up the 

 ground ; the solid ground is helpless before them ; 

 they tear and rend it. One engine is under an oak, 

 dark yet with leafless boughs, up through which the 

 black smoke rises; the other overtops a low hedge, 

 and is in full profile. By the panting, and the hum- 

 ming, and the clanking as the drum revolves, by the 

 smoke hanging in the still air, by the trembling of the 

 monster as it strains and tugs, by the sense of heat, 

 and effort, and pent-up energy bubbling over in jets 

 of steam that struggle through crevices somewhere, by 



