THE NATURAL MAN 247 



this man going to or returning from his field or two 

 with his horse and cart and with his womenkind, 

 for wife and daughters work on the land as they 

 would in France. I knew, from what he told me, 

 that his bit of land was poor and unpromising when 

 he got his lease of it, but I only realised later the 

 patient, immense toil which has made it fit for a 

 crop. It needed more preparation than plough and 

 harrow, couch fire, and manure to fit that rude land 

 for wheat. 



At either end of the wheat field I found a huge 

 heap of stones full five feet high, and covering as 

 much ground as a city garden. It looked as if there 

 must be a hundred tons of stones at least in each of 

 these heaps. Each flint was picked up separately by 

 hand, and put on a small heap. When the small 

 heaps grew and grew all over the field, the man 

 went round with his old cart and horse and shovelled 

 them up, and carried them off to the corners, and 

 there piled them in these two great heaps. 



And still the women gathered and gathered, and 

 for each flint they gathered four others seemed to 

 grow. 



See flints picked on such a field a little while, and 

 you will realise the truth of this. I watched stone- 

 pickers at work once on a bit of grubbed woodland 

 at my own home, and the field was hardly clear of 

 flints than lo ! the field was thick with flints. Stones 

 grow, English peasants who toil on flinty soil have 



