190 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
done, they could not possibly do it. A wheat rick was 
threshed one day, and when it was finished in the after- 
noon there were the sacks in a great heap about twenty 
or thirty yards from the barn. So soon as the rick was 
finished, the men asked for their money as usual, when 
the farmer said he wanted them to carry the sacks into 
the barn before they left. Oh no, they couldn’t do that. 
‘Well, then,’ said he, ‘I can’t pay you till you have done 
it.” No, they couldn’t do it, couldn’t be expected to 
carry sacks of wheat across the rickyard and into the 
barn like that, it was too much for any man to do; why 
couldn’t he send for the cart? The farmer replied that 
the cart was two miles away, engaged in other labour; 
the night was coming on, and if it rained in the night 
the wheat would be damaged. No, they couldn’t do it. 
The farmer would not pay them, and so the dispute 
continued for along time. At length the farmer said, 
‘Well, if you won’t do.it, perhaps you will at least help 
me as far as this : will you lift up a sack and place it on 
another high enough for me to get it on my back, and I 
will myself carry them to the barn?’ So small a 
favour they could not refuse, and having raised up a 
sack for him in this manner, he took it on his back and 
made off with it to the barn. He was anything but a 
strong man—far less able to carry a sack of wheat than 
the labourers—but determined not to be beaten. He 
carried one sack, then another and another, till he had 
got eight safely housed, when on coming back for the 
ninth he met a labourer with a sack on his back, shamed 
into giving assistance. After him a second man took a 
sack, and one by one they all followed, till in about half 
an hour all the wheat wasin the barn. This is the spirit 
in which they work if the least little difficulty occurs, 
or they are asked to do anything that varies from what . 
