The sun, on account of the mist, had a curious sentient, personal

look, demanding the masculine pronoun for its adequate expression.

His present aspect, coupled with the lack of all human forms in the

scene, explained the old-time heliolatries in a moment. One could

feel that a saner religion had never prevailed under the sky. The

luminary was a golden-haired, beaming, mild-eyed, God-like creature,

gazing down in the vigour and intentness of youth upon an earth that

was brimming with interest for him.

His light, a little later, broke though chinks of cottage shutters,

throwing stripes like red-hot pokers upon cupboards, chests of

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drawers, and other furniture within; and awakening harvesters who

were not already astir. But of all ruddy things that morning the brightest were two broad

arms of painted wood, which rose from the margin of yellow cornfield

hard by Marlott village. They, with two others below, formed the

revolving Maltese cross of the reaping-machine, which had been

brought to the field on the previous evening to be ready for

operations this day. The paint with which they were smeared,

intensified in hue by the sunlight, imparted to them a look of

having been dipped in liquid fire.

The field had already been "opened"; that is to say, a lane a few

feet wide had been hand-cut through the wheat along the whole

circumference of the field for the first passage of the horses and

machine. Two groups, one of men and lads, the other of women, had come down

the lane just at the hour when the shadows of the eastern hedge-top

struck the west hedge midway, so that the heads of the groups were

enjoying sunrise while their feet were still in the dawn. They

disappeared from the lane between the two stone posts which flanked

the nearest field-gate. Presently there arose from within a ticking like the love-making of

the grasshopper. The machine had begun, and a moving concatenation

of three horses and the aforesaid long rickety machine was visible

over the gate, a driver sitting upon one of the hauling horses,

and an attendant on the seat of the implement. Along one side of

the field the whole wain went, the arms of the mechanical reaper

revolving slowly, till it passed down the hill quite out of sight.

In a minute it came up on the other side of the field at the same

equable pace; the glistening brass star in the forehead of the fore

horse first catching the eye as it rose into view over the stubble,

then the bright arms, and then the whole machine.

The narrow lane of stubble encompassing the field grew wider with

each circuit, and the standing corn was reduced to a smaller area as

the morning wore on. Rabbits, hares, snakes, rats, mice, retreated

inwards as into a fastness, unaware of the ephemeral nature of their

refuge, and of the doom that awaited them later in the day when,

their covert shrinking to a more and more horrible narrowness, they

were huddled together, friends and foes, till the last few yards of

upright wheat fell also under the teeth of the unerring reaper, and

they were every one put to death by the sticks and stones of the

harvesters. The reaping-machine left the fallen corn behind it in little heaps,

each heap being of the quantity for a sheaf; and upon these the

active binders in the rear laid their hands--mainly women, but some

of them men in print shirts, and trousers supported round their

waists by leather straps, rendering useless the two buttons behind,

which twinkled and bristled with sunbeams at every movement of each

wearer, as if they were a pair of eyes in the small of his back.




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