We took rank again and swept steadily on through the hot still
hours into the evening shadows, until the sinking sun set a Gloria
to the psalm of another working day. Only a third of the field lay
mown, for we were not skilled labourers to cut our acre a day; I
saw it again that night under the moonlight and the starlight,
wrapped in a shroud of summer's mist.

The women joined us on the third day to begin haymaking, and the
air was fragrant of tossed and sun-dried grass. One of them walked
apart from the rest, without interest or freedom of movement; her
face, sealed and impassive, was aged beyond the vigour of her
years. I knew the woman by sight, and her history by hearsay. We
have a code of morals here--not indeed peculiar to this place or
people--that a wedding is 'respectable' if it precedes child-birth
by a bare month, tolerable, and to be recognised, should it succeed
the same by less than a year (provided the pair are not living in
the same village); but the child that has never been 'fathered' and
the wife without a ring are 'anathema,' and such in one was
Elizabeth Banks. She went away a maid and came back a year ago
with a child and without a name. Her mother was dead, her father
and the village would have none of her: the homing instinct is
very strong, or she would scarcely have returned, knowing the
traditions of the place. Old Dodden, seeing her, grumbled to me in
the rest-time.--"Can't think what the farmer wants wi' Lizzie Banks
in 'is field." "She must live," I said, "and by all showing her
life is a hard one." "She 'ad the makin' of 'er bed," he went on,
obstinately. "What for do she bring her disgrace home, wi' a
fatherless brat for all folks to see? We don't want them sort in
our village. The Lord's hand is heavy, an' a brat's a curse that