whole of the farming year leads up--the
day of the threshing, when the grain is at last released from danger and
made ready to be stored in barns, to be ground in mills. "Guldise," as
it is still called in West Cornwall, is an epic occasion, when all the
months, from the first breaking of the land to the piling of the reaped
sheaves, culminate at the apex of achievement.

In the field, between the waiting stacks, was the thresher; the
traction-engine which had dragged it there stood beyond, only harnessed
to it now by the long driving-belt that would, when the time came, make
of the thresher a living creature. Presently all the men began to
arrive, not only the labourers who always worked on the Manor farm, but
the men from the neighbouring farms, from those owned by Ishmael and
from others, for every threshing is a festival with a great dinner and
refreshments in the field and good cheer, even for the crowds of
children and stray dogs that always turn up out of nowhere. In the
kitchen the maids were busy with the preparations for the dinner, and in
the breakfast-room even Lissa, always late, was hurrying through her
breakfast so as to go out and start work on the series of quick sketches
she meant to do of the thresher at work and the groups around it.

Lissa was a young-looking woman for her thirty-five years, no more
pretty than she had ever been, but graceful, and with a strong charm in
her lazy voice and long grey eyes and in the mouth that was so like
Georgie's, only less regular. Her chin and jaw had the clear sharpness
of Ishmael's; she was far more like him both in character and aspect
than the sweet round Ruth, and Ishmael had grown to feel more and more
that no matter how long a time elapsed between the occasions when he and
Lissa saw each other, yet they could always pick up where they had left
off, that there was never need for more than half-sentences between
them. She, who was supposed to be the selfish one of the family because
she lived in London most of the year and seldom wrote--she was still the
only member of the household who had known something was wrong with
Ishmael. She had found him uncommunicative on the subject, but she
watched him with her clear understanding eyes that always made him think
her so restful.

"Come on, do Auntie Lissa!" urged Jim. "It's begun; I can hear it."

"So can I," said Lissa drily; for the great moaning hum of the thresher
filled the air, went on and on as it would