GOING WESTWARD 231 



lays it across the straws : when a dozen sheaves are pre- 

 pared in the same way he binds them with the bonds and 

 builds them into a stook of two rows leaning together. 

 It is impossible to work faster and harder than he does 

 in cutting and binding; only at the end of each dozen 

 sheaves does he stand at his full height, straight as an ash, 

 and laugh, and round off what he has been saying even 

 more vigorously than he began it. Then crouching again 

 he slays twelve other sheaves. Then he goes over to the 

 four-and-a-half-gallon cask in the hedge : it is a " fuel " 

 that he likes, and he pays for it himself. In his walk and 

 attitude and talk — except in his accent — there is little of 

 the countryman. He is a citizen of the world, without 

 wife or home or any tie except to toil — and after that 

 pleasure — and toil again. A loose bold liver — and lover 

 — there can be no doubt. The spirit of life is strong in 

 him, in limbs and chest and eyes and brain, the spirit 

 which compels one man to paint a picture, one to sacrifice 

 his life for another, one to endure poverty for an idea, 

 another to commit a murder. What is there for him — 

 to be the mark for a bullet, to contract a ravenous disease, 

 to bend slowly under the increasing pile of years, of work, 

 of pleasures ? He does not care. He is always seeing " a 

 bit of life " from town to town, from county to county, a 

 peerless fleshly man casting himself away as carelessly as 

 Nature cast him forth into the world. His father before 

 him was the same, ploughboy, circus rider, brickmaker, and 

 day labourer again on the land, one who always " looked 

 for a policeman when he had had a quart." He set out 

 on his travels again and disappeared. His wife went 

 another way, and she is still to be met with in the summer 

 weather, not looking as if she had ever borne such a son 



