80 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
rake. ‘Don’t you step on ’em too much, that’ll break 
‘em. On the light breeze that comes now and then a 
little chaff floats in at the open window from*the thresh- 
ing. A crooked sort of face appears in the doorway, 
the body has halted halfway up—a semi-gipsy face— 
and the fellow thrusts a basket before him on the floor. 
‘Want any herrings?’ ‘No, thankie—no,’ cries the 
giant. ‘Not to-day, measter; thusty enough without 
they.’ Herrings are regularly carried round in hop- 
time to all the gardens, and there is a great sale for 
them among the pickers. By degrees the ‘drier’ 
rises higher in the pocket, coming up, as it were, 
through the floor—first his shoulders, then his body, and 
now his knees are visible. This is the ancient way of 
filling a hop pocket; a machine is used now in large 
kilns, but here, where there is only one cone, indicative 
of a small garden, the old method is followed. 
The steps on which I sit lead up to the door of the 
cone. Inside, the green hops lie on the horsehair carpet, 
and the fumes of the sulphur burning underneath come 
up through them. A vapour hangs about the surface of 
the hops; looking upwards, the diminishing cone rises 
hollow to the cowl, where a piece of blue sky can be 
seen. Round the cone a strip of thin lathing is coiled 
on a spiral; could any one stand on these steps and | 
draw the inside of the cone? Could perspective be so 
managed as to give the idea of the diminishing hollow 
and spiral? the side opposite would not be so difficult, 
but the bit this side, overhead and almost perpendicular, 
and so greatly foreshortened, how with that? It would 
be necessary to make the spectator of the drawing feel 
as if this side of the cone rose up from behind his head ; 
as if his head were just inside the cone. Would not this 
be as curious a bit of study as any that could be found 
