Harvest

hel Henderson at home wh

ng with his unknown c

days before the signing of the armistice, there had been a general slackening, as though by silent and general consent, in the timber felling due to the war througho

in love-making. The engagement had been announced, and Ellesborough belie

ubtle, with many signs, fugitive and surprising, of a deep and tragic reflectiveness; he became also more and more conscious of what seemed to him the lasting effects upon her of her miserable marriage. The nervous effects a

ister vision at the window had sprung for a moment out of the darkness. Before almost he could move towards it, it had gone. And with a farewell smile at the woman he had just been holding in his arms, a smile which bet

arks, and of two or three other supposed visions of a man, tall and stooping, with a dark sallow face, which persons working on the farm, or walking near it on the hill, had either seen or imagined. Ellesborough finally had jumped on his motor-bicycle and ridden off to the police

d, drawn, perhaps, from the alien population which had been floating th

ous, that both Ellesborough and Janet were alarmed. Overwork, according to Janet, with the threshing, and in the potato-fields. Never had R

h's company. Here she was more docile, feverishly submissive and happy, indeed, so long as Ellesborough made the plans, and Ellesbo

*

flourishes he had now bestowed upon it, he told his story. Janet, who, on a hint from Hastings, had expected the visitation, was at any rate glad that Ra

wondered, between it and the creature who had been prowling round the farm? Was some one personating the ghost, and for what

ith it. It's a very impudent thing to do! It's not playing f

ne should interfere with it, turned the whole thing to comedy. Moreover, his fatuous absorption in that side of the

ardly, twisting his cap. "I'd like to have had a talk with her

Janet irre

d seemed embarrassed. At

son ever knew a man call

nip

ard her spe

s Henderson at Millsborough that day of th

tly. But some instinct

chap-who lived not far from the man I was with-an

d y

y grew

is lady I saw was a Mrs. Delane. But was Mrs. Delane perhaps a

s the door, as a signal to him to take his leave. "B

her, and of the solitary-apparently bachelor-owner of the farm, began to affect Janet uncomfortably. She got rid of the chatter-box as soon as possi

he saw Mrs. Delane, at night, in Dick Tanner's house. And Janet remembered that, according to the story which as they two sat by the fire alone at night, when the girls were gone to bed, Rachel had gradually built up befo

some one else there-whom the boy didn't see. Perhaps she had herself taken

*

e stubbles and the new-turned plough-lands in the upland cup to a pearly whiteness as they lay under the dark

Rachel throwing off her thick coat with Ellesborough'

esborough, smiling at Janet.

as though now that there was light to

and depression had vanished; she was full of c

opping with a man! He can't

Ellesborough, looking up at her as she p

laug

buy the whole place! If I'd taken his advice

l when one's going to be married!"

d him-with a hand

t is, if you're agreeable. Will you min

orough, "I shall be free in a month or so, and then we propose to marry and ge

o Janet, over Rachel's aspect, but she at

seen his people. We've got to decide whet

ed gravely to Janet-"that first and fo

into Janet's eyes. B

all right. Don't

nergy, "but I'll tell you all about i

h rose. After a little more chat about the da

you ge

the village. I shall wa

on again. She would walk with him to the road

they were in that stage of passion when everything is unreal outside the one supreme thing, and all other life passes like a show half-seen. And all t

he path through the stubbles, walking hand-

little line to my

f cours

t her lo

y, darling. I promise y

emed somehow to speak for them both. And she added, bitterly, "It's

e of love to make up to you-for that horrible time. Forget it, d

ery strict a

hesitated-j

bout your case-dearest-who coul

ng me up, and tak

nately. They walked in sil

st. I shall be

till

omes tomorrow, the camp'll go mad, a

assive in his arms, the moonlight touched her brown h

venly to-day?"

nly! G

he motor cycle along the distant road had no sooner died away, than a shiver ran through her which was more than physical. So long as he was there, she was happy,

in an anguish, as she walked back through the broad open field where the winter-sown corn was jus

rvest of his upright and hard-working past-she was going to marry him with a lie between them, so that she could never look him straight in the face, never be certain that, sometime or other, something would not emerge like a drowned face from the dark, and ruin all their happiness. It had seemed, at the beginning, so easy to keep silence, to tell everything but the one miserable fac

hysical facts? Accept them, and the incidents that spring from them. Why all this weeping and wailing over supposed shames and disgraces? The sex-life of the present is making its own new codes. Who knows what they will ultimately be? An

shared through all her young years. She might and did protest that the faith was no longer hers. But it had stamped her. She could never be wholly rid of its prejudices and repulsions. What would her father have said to her divorce?-he w

was tenderly and unconsciously revealing them. And, finally, there was the daily influence of Janet's neighbourhood-Janet, so austere for herself, so pi

capable both of good and evil. Rachel felt the burden of their virtues

in simple, clear, practical ambitions: how to improve her stock-how to grow another bushel to the acre-how and when to build a silo-whether to try electrification: a score of pleasant riddles that made the hours fly. And now this old fever had crept again into her blood

ongue to say, "Tell me, who was Dick Tanner?" Then, in a sudden panic fear, lest the words should slip out, and bring something irreparable, she would get up, and make a restless pretence of some household work or oth

ch other, and Janet

on the red glow of the embers,

would end the war. Somewhere in a French chateau there was a group of men conferring, a

hing. Rachel guessed it was a prayer. But her own heart seemed dead and dumb. She could not free it fro

e bells from Ipscombe Church tower. Labourers and girls threw down what they were doing, and gathered in the farm-yard round Janet and Rachel, who were waving flags on the st

said Rachel. "I'll get t

h, and peace or no peace, she had so

," said Hastings. "I'd rather

is great day might tempt marauders-especially that thief or madman who had been haunting their own premises. She hoped the police would not forget them either. But Hastings' offer to stay ti

t, which was filled with farm produce. She was to take early dinner with some new friends, and th

fter her, lost in a painful uncertainty. "Can't you let it alone?" Lord Melbourne was accustomed to say suavely to those members of the Cabinet