his straw hat set like a halo on the back of his head.

"Expected a funeral," he said cheerfully.

Bill is the undertaker's assistant, and is always on call in cases of
emergency.

"What happened, Bill?"

"They thought they'd bury 'im this afternoon, but they took an' kep' 'im
over till to-morrow."

"But you came prepared."

"Yas, no time to go home in hayin'. The pump fer me, and the black
togs."

Bill calls the first rakings of the hay "tumbles," and the scattered
re-rakings, which he despises, he calls "scratchings." I took one side
of the load and John, the Pole, the other and we put on great forkfuls
from the tumbles which Bill placed skilfully at the corners and sides of
the load, using the scratchings for the centre.

John, the Pole, watched the load from below. "Tank he too big here," he
would say, or, "Tank you put more there"; but Bill told mostly by the
feel of the load under his feet or by the "squareness of his eye."
John, the Pole, is a big, powerful fellow, and after smoothing down the
load with his fork he does not bother to rake up the combings, but
gathering a bunch of loose hay with his fork, he pushes it by main
strength, and very quickly, around the load, and running his fork
through the heap, throws it upon the mountain-high load in a
twinkling--an admirable, deft performance.

Hay-making is a really beautiful process: the clicking mower cutting its
clean, wide swath, a man stepping after, where the hay is very heavy, to
throw the windrow back a little. Then, after lying to wilt and dry in
the burning sun--all full of good odours--the horse-rake draws it neatly
into wide billows, and after that, John, the Pole, and I roll the
billows into tumbles. Or, if the hay is slow in drying, as it was not
this year, the kicking tedder goes over it, spreading it widely. Then
the team and rack on the smooth-cut meadow and Bill on the load, and
John and I pitching on; and the talk and badinage that goes on, the
excitement over disturbed field mice, the discussion of the best methods
of killing woodchucks, tales of marvellous exploits of loaders and
stackers, thrilling incidents of the wet year of '98 when two men and
one team saved four acres of hay by working all night--"with lanterns, I
jing"--much talk of how she goes on, "she" being the hay, and no end of
observations upon the character, accomplishments, faults, and excesses
of the sedate old horses waiting comfortably out in front, half hidden