gold and glow of harvest was on the fields and in the air. At last the
sun had come back to a sodden land, after weeks of cold and drenching
showers which, welcomed in June, had by the middle of August made all
England tremble for the final fate of the gorgeous crops then filling the
largest area ever tilled on British soil with their fat promise. Wheat,
oats, and barley stood once more erect, roots were saved, and the young
vicar of Ipscombe was reflecting as he walked towards Great End Farm that
his harvest festival sermon might now after all be rather easier to write
than had seemed probable during the foregoing anxious weeks of chill and
storm.

Rachel Henderson, who had thrown herself--tired out--into a chair in the
sitting-room window, which was wide open, nodded as she caught her
friend's remark and smiled. But she did not want to talk. She was in that
state of physical fatigue when mere rest is a positive delight. The sun,
the warm air, the busy harvest scene, and all the long hours of hard but
pleasant work seemed to be still somehow in her pulses, thrilling through
her blood. It was long since she had known the acute physical pleasure of
such a day; but her sense of it had conjured up involuntarily
recollections of many similar days in a distant scene--great golden
spaces, blinding sun, and huge reaping machines, twice the size of that
at work in the field yonder. The recollections were unwelcome. Thought
was unwelcome. She wanted only food and sleep--deep sleep--renewing
her tired muscles, till the delicious early morning came round again, and
she was once more in the fields directing her team of workers.

"Why, there's the vicar!" said Janet Leighton, perceiving the tall and
willowy figure of Mr. Shenstone, as its owner stopped to speak to one of
the boys with the guns who were watching the game.