small beer. The Lady Blanche, at least once in the autumn, rode up,
alighted, and drank one glass of the home-made wine with the dowdy. Her
papa, the landlord, was an invalid, but he as invariably sent a splendid
basket of hot-house grapes. But Farmer M---- was behind the age.

Had he looked over the hedge in the evening, he might have seen a row of
reapers walking down the road at the sudden sound of a jingling bell
behind them, open their line, and wheel like a squad, part to the right
and part to the left, to let the bicycle pass. After it had gone by they
closed their rank, and trudged on toward the village. They had been at
work all day in the uplands among the corn, cutting away with their hooks
low down the yellow straw. They began in the early morning, and had first
to walk two miles or more up to the harvest field. Stooping, as they
worked, to strike low enough, the hot sun poured his fierce rays upon
their shoulders and the backs of their necks. The sinews of the right arm
had continually to drive the steel through straw and tough weeds entangled
in the wheat. There was no shadow to sit under for luncheon, save that at
the side of the shocks, where the sheaves radiated heat and interrupted
the light air, so that the shadow was warmer than the sunshine. Coarse
cold bacon and bread, cheese, and a jar of small beer, or a tin can of
weak cold tea, were all they had to supply them with fresh strength for
further labour.

At last the evening came, the jackets so long thrown aside were resumed,
and the walk home began. After so many hours of wearisome labour it was
hardly strange that their natural senses were dulled--that they did not
look about them, nor converse gaily. By mutual, if unexpressed consent,
they intended to call at the wayside inn when they reached it, to rest on
the hard bench outside, and take a quart of stronger ale. Thus trudging
homewards after that exhausting day, they did not hear the almost silent