AUGUST. 133 



A DAY OF TERROR. 



Then, when the scythemen had cleared a passage 

 where the strong farm-horses, two abreast, could 

 draw the cutters, a louder terror arose. Rattling of 

 steel teeth that cut the cornstalks by hundreds, and 

 the swirling rustle of great sheaves that fell before 

 the revolving blades and were neatly laid aside in 

 ordered rows, mixed with the tramp of horses and 

 the shouts of men, passed round and round the field 

 now dying away in the distance on the left and 

 presently swelling loud again from the right And 

 soon the wondering small things found, as they drew 

 further and further towards the middle of the field, 

 that the intervals of silence grew shorter, and then 

 that there were no intervals at all, but the rattling 

 of the cutters, the rustle of the falling corn, and the 

 voices of the men were audible through the whole 

 of their narrowing circuit. 



DASHES FOR LIFE. 



And by this time many of the retreating small 

 things had passed beyond the range of their familiar 

 corn-glades and found themselves in the company of 

 others whom they had never met before, creeping, 

 like them, away from the encircling terror towards 

 the centre of the field. Then panic began. Some 

 running this way and some that alarmed each other 

 the more, and in sudden horror, when the rushing 

 sound of the cutters suddenly seemed to approach 

 from an unexpected direction, now one and now 

 another would break cover, sometimes in the wrong 



