388 WHEAT AND WOMAN 



worked for me right through the season of 1907, 

 and much that was excellent in the harvests of 

 1908 and 1910 I owed to his insistence of " getting 

 it in good and quick all right." 



It was fated to be a difficult year. I had some 

 trouble in getting in the threshers, my corner having 

 relied on the return of Alan Redcliffe's outfit, but he 

 failed us. Then Danny McLeay secured an awfully 

 good outfit which had agreed to take him and John 

 McLeay in its line on the way to David Chambers. 

 John McLeay felt sure Mr. Chambers would stand 

 aside another day that I might be included in the 

 grace, but although I begged hard he wouldn't give 

 an inch. But two years later he most kindly 

 allowed another outfit to come to me first, and the 

 bad end of that good turn left him with his grain 

 in stook through the winter, for the snow fell early, 

 and threshing became difficult and indeed 

 impossible. 



However the kindness of 1911 cannot possibly be 

 foreseen through the resolution of 1908, and I 

 felt that he was ungenerous and almost unjust 

 about excluding me from the grace to which he 

 admitted John and Danny McLeay ; because 

 although many an outfit would have crossed a mile 

 or so to do our triple job, either alone was no par- 

 ticular catch. In my dilemma I drove straight to 

 Guy Mazey, and he promised to help me out of the 

 difficulty and to come in directly his own job was 

 over. 



On the following Saturday evening I heard the 

 engine puffing along its way through the stooks. 

 It was a steel-bright night, and I hadn't a shadow 

 of regret for the loss of my day of rest, but just 



