THE VANISHED SHEAF 229 



scape. To find it we drove first through some of the 

 fairest scenery of Norfolk, a county as famous for its 

 grain crops as its wild sanctuaries, for its game and its 

 barley stubbles as its migrant birds and its Broads. 

 Almost all the way we were enveloped in the scent of 

 bracken, more powerful and pungent even than the scent 

 of pines drawn out by a midday sun. Inland and beyond 

 the woods and commons opened out immense stretches 

 of grain, as we measure immensity in this little country : 

 the aisles of stook as long for an English field as the aisles 

 of Ely for a cathedral. For an old-fashioned harvest 

 field always suggests some great and holy building ; the 

 regular pillars of fluted stooks lead the thought to some 

 eastern altar and the sky seems a patterned roof of lofty 

 but finite elevation. 



Most of the corn was already cut, and the country 

 seemed almost empty of workers till we came upon a 

 yard where a score of men were busy among a dozen 

 stacks. They gave us news of the strange harvesting that 

 we sought, for it is discussed in every cottage in every 

 parish thereabouts. We were to turn right and then 

 left and then right again, round the big field of sugar 

 beet, cross a field, and on the other side of the wood we 

 should see what we went out to see. Where the beet 

 field ended was the first sign of the new thing : a gate 

 post had been dug up and cast aside to provide a royal 

 road. Beyond, some immense and weighty machine had 

 dug channels across the stable roadway ; and they made 

 a very rough sea for our flippant vehicle ; but the track 

 took us straight through the wood, and further on was 

 the theatre itself and the play in progress. 



On either side the narrow T-shaped wood of pines 

 where the pigeons still cooed contentedly, in spite of the 

 mechanical clamour, stretched out wide fields of barley, 



