While they uncovered the sheaves he stood apathetic beside his

portable repository of force, round whose hot blackness the morning

air quivered. He had nothing to do with preparatory labour. His

fire was waiting incandescent, his steam was at high pressure, in

a few seconds he could make the long strap move at an invisible

velocity. Beyond its extent the environment might be corn, straw,

or chaos; it was all the same to him. If any of the autochthonous

idlers asked him what he called himself, he replied shortly, "an

engineer." The rick was unhaled by full daylight; the men then took their

places, the women mounted, and the work began. Farmer Groby--or, as

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they called him, "he"--had arrived ere this, and by his orders Tess

was placed on the platform of the machine, close to the man who fed

it, her business being to untie every sheaf of corn handed on to her

by Izz Huett, who stood next, but on the rick; so that the feeder

could seize it and spread it over the revolving drum, which whisked

out every grain in one moment.

They were soon in full progress, after a preparatory hitch or two,

which rejoiced the hearts of those who hated machinery. The work

sped on till breakfast time, when the thresher was stopped for half

an hour; and on starting again after the meal the whole supplementary

strength of the farm was thrown into the labour of constructing the

straw-rick, which began to grow beside the stack of corn. A hasty

lunch was eaten as they stood, without leaving their positions, and

then another couple of hours brought them near to dinner-time; the

inexorable wheel continuing to spin, and the penetrating hum of the

thresher to thrill to the very marrow all who were near the revolving

wire-cage. The old men on the rising straw-rick talked of the past days

when they had been accustomed to thresh with flails on the oaken

barn-floor; when everything, even to winnowing, was effected by

hand-labour, which, to their thinking, though slow, produced better

results. Those, too, on the corn-rick talked a little; but the

perspiring ones at the machine, including Tess, could not lighten

their duties by the exchange of many words. It was the ceaselessness

of the work which tried her so severely, and began to make her

wish that she had never some to Flintcomb-Ash. The women on the

corn-rick--Marian, who was one of them, in particular--could stop to

drink ale or cold tea from the flagon now and then, or to exchange

a few gossiping remarks while they wiped their faces or cleared the

fragments of straw and husk from their clothing; but for Tess there

was no respite; for, as the drum never stopped, the man who fed

it could not stop, and she, who had to supply the man with untied

sheaves, could not stop either, unless Marian changed places with

her, which she sometimes did for half an hour in spite of Groby's

objections that she was too slow-handed for a feeder.




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