78 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
tiles, whose fastening pegs were visible. A great heap 
of golden scales lay in one corner, the hops fresh from 
the drying. Up to Kis waist in a pocket let through the 
floor a huge giant of a man trod the hops down in the 
sack, turning round and round, and now his wide 
shoulders and now his red cheeks succeeded. The 
music twirled him about as a leaf by the wind. With- 
out the rich blue autumn sky ; within the fragrant odour 
of hops, the hum of the threshing circling round like 
the buzz of an immense bee. As the hum of insects 
high in the atmosphere of midsummer suits and fits to 
the roses and the full green meads, so the hum of the 
threshing suits to the yellowing leaf and drowsy air of 
autumn. The iteration of hum and monotone soothes, 
and means so much more in its inarticulation than the 
adjusted chords and tune of written music. Laughing, 
the children romped round the ricks; they love the 
threshing and flock to it, they watch the fly-wheel 
rotating, they look in at the furnace door when the 
engine-driver stokes his fire, they gaze wondcringly at 
the gauge, and long to turn the brass taps; then witha 
shout they rush to chase the unhappy mice dislodged 
from the corn. The mice hide themselves in the petti- 
coats of the women working at the ‘sheening, and the 
cottager when she goes home in the evening calls her 
cat and shakes them out of her skirts. By a blue 
waggon the farmer stands leaning on his staff. He is 
an invalid, and his staff, or rather pole, is as tall as him- 
self; he holds it athwart, one end touching the ground 
beyond his left foot, the other near his right shoulder. 
His right hand grasps it rather high, and his left down 
by his hip, so that the pole forms a line across his body. 
In this way he is steadied and supported and his whole 
weight relieved, much more so than it would be with an 
