valley. But no one heeds it--the train goes on its way to the great
city, the reapers abide by their labour. Men and women, lads and girls,
some mere children, judged by their stature, are plunged as it were in
the wheat.

The few that wear bright colours are seen: the many who do not are
unnoticed. Perhaps the dusky girl here with the red scarf may have some
strain of the gipsy, some far-off reminiscence of the sunlit East which
caused her to wind it about her. The sheaf grows under her fingers, it
is bound about with a girdle of twisted stalks, in which mingle the
green bine of convolvulus and the pink-streaked bells that must fade.

Heat comes down from above; heat comes up from beneath, from the dry,
white earth, from the rows of stubble, as if emitted by the endless
tubes of cut stalks pointing upwards. Wheat is a plant of the sun: it
loves the heat, and heat crackles in the rustle of the straw. The
pimpernels above which the hook passed are wide open: the larger white
convolvulus trumpets droop languidly on the low hedge: the distant hills
are dim with the vapour of heat; the very clouds which stay motionless
in the sky reflect a yet more brilliant light from their white edges. Is
there no shadow?

There is no tree in the field, and the low hedge can shelter nothing;
but bordering the next, on rather higher ground, is an ash copse, with
some few spruce firs. Resting on a rail in the shadow of these firs, a
light air now and again draws along beside the nut-tree bushes of the
hedge, the cooler atmosphere of the shadow, perhaps causes it. Faint as
it is, it sways the heavy laden brome grass, but is not strong enough to
lift a ball of thistledown from the bennets among which it is entangled.