till to-morrow we shall begin," he announces.
But next day the wind had backed afresh, and the cheerful clouds of
yesterday, now torn and shapeless, straggling in disorderly rout,
seemed to be fleeing like the wreckage of a broken army.

Madame Chapdelaine foretold inevitable misfortune. "Mark my words,
we shall not have good hay-making weather. They say that down by the
end of the lake some people of the same parish have gone to law with
one another. Of a certainty the good God does not like that sort of
thing!"

Yet the Power at length was pleased to show indulgence, and the
north-west wind blew for three days on end, steady and strong,
promising a rainless week. The scythes were long since sharpened and
ready, and the five men set to work on the morning of the third day.
Legare, Esdras and the father cut; Da'Be and Tit'Be followed close
on their heels, raking the hay together. Toward evening all five
took their forks in hand and made it into cocks, high and carefully
built, lest a change of wind should bring rain. But the sunshine
lasted. For five days they carried on, swinging the scythe steadily
from right to left with that broad free movement that seems so easy
to the practised hand, and is in truth the hardest to learn and the
most fatiguing of all the labours known to husbandry.

Flies and mosquitos rose in swarms from the cut hay, stinging and
tormenting the workers; a blazing sun scorched their necks, and
smarting sweat ran into their eyes; when evening came, such was the
ache of backs continually bent, they could not straighten themselves
without making wry faces. Yet they toiled from dawn to nightfall
without loss of a second, hurrying their meals, feeling nothing but
gratitude and happiness that the weather stood fair.

Three or four times a day Maria or Telesphore brought them a bucket
of water which they stood in a shady spot to keep it cool; and when
throats became unbearably dry with heat, exertion and the dust of
the hay, they went by turns to swallow great-draughts and deluge
wrists or head.

In five days all the hay was cut, and, the drought persisting, on
the morning of the sixth day they began to break and scatter the
cocks they intended lodging in the barn before night. The scythes
had done their work and the forks came into play. They threw down
the cocks, spread the bay in the sun, and toward the end of the
afternoon, when dry, heaped it anew in piles of such a size that a
man could just