sting it sternly away from the forefront of his
attention.

He turned it over again now as the clattering binder went round and
round, diminishing the square of waving gold, littering the stubble with
swathes; and at every passing of it he waved to Jimmy, even when the
child had forgotten his presence and was showing off for the benefit of
some newcomer in the little group. The machine was nearing the tall
monolith of granite that stood up amid the corn, and Nicky was driving
carefully so as not to scrape the flails against its stone side. High
as he sat on his iron perch, it towered above him, and he turned the
horses carefully round it with a swirl that made Jimmy shriek for
pleasure. Jimmy leant sideways from his steed to try and slap the grey
granite in passing, but could not reach it save with the end of his
little whip.

The last film of standing crop fell away from before the monolith, and
it reared up grim and gaunt, but sparkling with a thousand little points
of light as the bright flecks in the stone caught the sun. Nicky, who
had grown rather tired of his freak, undertaken to please Jimmy, brought
it, to an end with the successful negotiation of the monolith, and,
getting down, went to lift Jimmy also from his perch.

"Dinner-time," he told him, and let him sit upon his shoulder, big boy
as he was, to ride to the gate.

"Come along, father," said Nicky, slipping one hand upon Ishmael's arm,
and keeping the other folded over the slim brown ankles crossed against
his chest; "I promised Lissa I wouldn't let you tire yourself."

They set off towards the house, the three of them, but it was Nicky who
answered Jim's eager talk as they went, and Ishmael who in silence tried
to answer his own thoughts. To one thing only he clung just then, with a
blind, almost superstitious, clinging, and that to his determination to
taste every moment of this harvesting, to see that everything was done
in the way he liked, to watch the rhythmic procession of it while yet he
could say that it was all his own. Physically also he had not been the
same man these months since the death of Archelaus. With his uncertainty
of mind as to the whole meaning of life went a feeling of insecurity
about everything. Often he had to keep a firm hold on himself not to cry
aloud that the world was slipping, slipping....

When the corn was all built into the great arishmows that stood bowing
towards each other like the giant dancers in some state