DANVIS FARM LIFE 81 



a farming tool or two, or the sheets from their 

 beds, doubtless as mementoes of their sojourn in 

 the States. But the Batistes and Antoines and 

 innumerable Joes and Pierres ' bide on their own 

 arpents now all the summer through and come to 

 us no more. If we miss them, with their baggy 

 trousers and gay sashes, the shuffle of their moc- 

 casined feet and their sonorous songs that had 

 always a touch of pathos in them, we do not 

 mourn for them. 



As the cut grass dries under the downright 

 beams of the summer sun and becomes ready for 

 the raking, the windrows (always "winrows," 

 here) lengthen along the shaven sward as the 

 horse-rake goes back and forth across the meadow, 

 and the workmen following with forks soon dot 

 the fields with cocks if the hay is to wait to-mor- 

 row's drawing, or with less careful tumbles if it 

 goes to barn or stack to-day. 



Now the wagon comes surmounted by its rat- 

 tling " hay-riggin'," with the legs of the pitcher 

 and the unfortunate who "mows away" and 

 "rakes after" dangling over its side, and the man 

 who loads, the captain, pilot, and stevedore of this 

 craft, standing forward driving his horses, for the 

 oxen and cart, too slow for these hurrying times, 

 have lumbered into the past. The stalwart pitcher 

 upheaves the great forkfuls, skillfully bestowed 

 by the loader, till they have grown into a load 



