Harvest

et Leighton, as they stood on the front steps of Great End Farm, surveying the scene outside, on an August evening, abo

ys with guns lay in wait outside the square for the rabbits as they bolted from their fast lessening shelter. The 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 th

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

ll and willowy figure of Mr. Shenstone, as its owner stopped to

ound with a loo

suppose I must go and tidy up. Nobody ought to

ng about a village wom

ady, and had slipped a skirt over the khaki tunic and knickerbockers which were her dress-and her partner's-when at work on the farm. She wondered mischievously what Rachel would put on. That her character included an average dose of vanity, the natural vanity of

How little I really know about her

een attracted by the loneliness of the other, and on leaving college nothing was more natural than they should agree to set up together. Rachel, as the capitalist, was to choose the farm and take command. Janet went to a Cheshire dairy farm for a time to get some further training in practical work; and she was now responsible f

hton descended the steps and went to meet him

ld have no chance of finding Miss Henderson free till the evening, and

would soon be visible. She ushered him into the si

ow, the village people firmly believe it is haunted? Old Wellin never could get anybody to sleep here. But tramps often used it

, as she pointed him to a chair, devoutl

y-but I wonder whethe

ugh, "and I don't think Rachel has either. We are more frightened of rats. T

he ghost-" said the

t produced the gho

id the vicar reassuringl

we should feel we ought to have got the farm cheaper. But half a century doesn'

just an ordinary poaching affair. An old gamekeeper on the Shepherd estate had been attacked by a gang of poachers in the winter of 1866. He had been shot in one of the woods, and though mortally wounded had been able to drag himself to the outskirts of the farm where his strength had failed him. He was found dead under the

e the vicar was again s

oughtn't; just on your settling in-I

n the conversation, was surprised by it, as indeed she was by so many things concerning Rachel now that their acquaintance was deepening; surprised also, as though it were a new thing, by her friend's good looks as she sat languidly chatting with the vicar. Rachel had merely put on a blue overall above her land-worker's dress. But her beautiful head, with its wealth of brown hair, and her face, with its sensuous fulness of cheek and lip, its rounded lines, and lovely colour-like a slightly overblown rose-were greatly set off by the

up-to-date with regard to women and their new spheres of work-especially on the land. He had noticed three girls, he s

om Ralstone,"

new timber camp is. You really m

woods coming down," she

ful to see the women at work, measuring and checking, doing the brain work

appeared on his young bu

men-or t

something for the war. I've done my b

y. Health and the shortage of clergy had been against him. "I suppose there must be s

, so anxious to propitiate what he imagined ought to be their feelin

er camp; she would like to go and see it, she said.

s had travelled

as evidently thrown out nervously at a venture, just to e

frowned slightl

ave been

then, you kno

g about Canadi

on the p

e time on a

cally. But this amiable tone fell flat. Miss Henderson still sat silent.

id, turning to Janet Leighton. "I should be delighted to help in the harvest

threw in a few civil words. Rachel Henderson had moved to the window, and

e and friendly all the time. "I hope you will let your Ralstone girl come sometimes to the clubroom my s

far away. We don't lik

"However, there it is-whenever she comes she will be welcome. And then, as to your seat

" said Rachel, facing h

d at her

counted on," sai

flushed

not Church

on is a Unitarian." Then her eyes lit up with a touch of fun, and for the first

ation, inviting him to come the following day to help in the "carrying," asking questions about the village and its people, and graciously consenting to fix a day when she and her friend would go to tea with Miss Shenst

ever really indifferent or capricious, her new friend could not in the long run resign herself to be disliked, even by a woman, and much more in the case of a man. Was it vanity, or sex, or both? Temperament perhaps; the modern word which covers so much. Janet remembered a little niec

ost fierce delicacy-a shrinking from the ugly or merely physical facts

d their liking for each other, and had agreed to set up in partnership. Then Rachel, springing to her feet, with her hands behind her, and head thrown back, had said suddenly: "I warn you, I have

n becoming Rachel Henderson's partner on th

receive some parcels handed out by the "exempted" man who drove it, together with some letters which had been found lying at the

ho had been driving the reaping machine was doing some rough repairs to it in a far corner of the field, with a view to the morrow, and she caught sight of her new bailiff, Hastings, who had waited to see everybody off, disappearing towards his ow

still with an energy, a passion, that astonished herself. She was full of eagerness for her new work and for success in it, full of desires, too, for

r bargain. Her mind was full of schemes, if only she could get the labour to carry them out. Farming was now on the up-grade. She h

, taking advantage of it. Yet she was ashamed to think of the war only in that way. She tried to tame the strange ferment in her blood, and could only do it by reminding herself of Hastings's wounded son

er, till the whimper was renewed; and there, almost at her feet, cradled in the fragrant hollow of a w

er cry, which was not angry, however, only forlorn. The tears

y, mu

hing!" said Rachel

a little girl playing about the reapers in the afternoon-no doubt an elder sister brought to look after the baby. Be

her-a spell, which worked. She bent over the little thing, soothing and cooing to her, and then finding a few crumbs of cake in the pocket of her overall, the remains of he

eated, still whi

id Rachel tenderly.

greedily, with the same ardour she had just

ght upon her arms was delicious to her. Only as she neared the gate in the now

ed a child," she

eld, and a girl came running at top speed. It was the little one's

gathered round the table in the kitchen, which was also the dining-room. It was a cold meal of bacon, with lettuce, bread and jam, some tea made on a "Tommy's cooker," and potatoes which Janet, who was for the present housekeeper and cook, produced hot and steaming from the hay-box to which she had consigned them af

two younger by a purely business tie, which might or might not develop into something more personal. The two land-lasses had come to supper in their tunics and breeches, while Rachel Henderson and Janet had now both put on the coloured overalls

t they liked Miss Leighton the best of the two ladies, they hardly knew why. Betty Rolfe, the younger of them, who came from Ralstone, was a taking creature, with deep black, or rather violet, eyes, small features

stead of speech, at least in her employer's presence. She was a capital milker, and a good honest child. Her people lived in the village, and her forebear

beautiful Jersey cow who was the pride of Miss Henderson's new herd, Janet Leig

-is already-the commandant of th

couldn'

Mrs. Ferguss

ised her

h lady? P

tled, with thirty girls, that the work is fascinating, an

oked irre

a long

far. An' it's lovely when you get there. Father was there

village, owned a humble open ca

risoners, quite a good few, and these thirty girls. Mrs. Fergusson begs us to come. Sunday's no good

said

e moment, but after supper, with her writ

el, who was standing with her back t

r puzzled, "but I thought you were curious

It isn't t

isoners, then?

vens

n wonder-after a moment. Rache

d, as though the admission was dragged out of her; adding im

g the stooks in the gloaming, her hands behind her back. She seemed in

cows, slipped into the little sitting-room. Janet, who was mending her Sunday dress, greeted them with a smile and a kind word. Then she moved to the

arrival. "Don't if you don't want to." And they had shyly said "yes"-not particularly at

that believeth on Me hath everlasting life ... I am the Bread of Life ... I am the living Bread

she had no objection to the prayers, she was not to be asked to take part in them. So that Janet's pulses fluttered a little when she appeared. But there was no outward sign of it. The speaker finished what she had to say, while the eyes of her three hearers were sometimes on her face and sometimes on the wide cornfield beyond the open w

the blacksmith's son, a tall, handsome fellow, who had just arrived on leave for ten days. She had spent

d. Janet felt a little awkward when she was left alone with Rachel, but she went back to her sewing an

window beside her was open. She saw the side of the hill and the bare down in which it ended, with the moonlight bright upon it, and the dark woods cr

differently as far as phraseology-perhaps even as far as meaning-went, yet with all his heart, like Janet. He was an Anglican clergyman who had done missionary service in the Can

fervour of her protest. She had been through passion and wrong, through things that seared and defiled. She knew well that she had been no mere innocent sufferer. Yet now she had her life before her ag

her; Janet, with her pure, modest life and her high aims. So, at last, clinging t