m. "You are going to bed,
and it is going to bed too."

"Is it very tired?" asked Jimmy.

"Yes, nicely tired, like you when you have been running about all day."

"Not nasty tired like I am after lessons?"

"No, not nasty tired."

"Are you tired, Grandad?"

"Yes," said Ishmael.

"Nice tired or nasty tired?"

"Nice tired," said Ishmael; "old men and little boys both go nice
tired."

"Like the thresher?" persisted Jimmy, and, receiving an answer that
satisfied him, allowed his grandfather to carry him in to bed, though he
could have gone in so much more quickly himself, for grandpapa could not
run with him on his shoulder as his father could. But Jimmy was in no
hurry, because every minute gained was a minute out of bed and in this
wonderful world where threshers hummed and golden clouds wove themselves
ceaselessly in the air.

Ishmael too felt very tired, as he had said; but, as he had also said,
it was a pleasant tiredness. His day had been too full for thought other
than of what was happening before his eyes. An exquisite sense of
fitness, of something that was falling into place as everything in the
history of the harvest had done, a sense as of gathered sheaves and
stored grain, was with him, though sub-consciously. His brain felt
filled with visual impressions, his old eyes held a riot of blue and
gold, and a humming was still in his ears. As he closed his lids that
night golden motes danced within them.

He sank off into sleep, and then drifted, half-awake again, to that
state when the mind is not fully aware of where it is or of what has
happened. It seemed to him, for one blurred moment, that he was a little
boy again, falling to sleep on that evening when the Neck was cried ...;
and then, out of the far past, came back to him the remembrance that it
was at the Vicarage he had slept that night. Something told him he was
not there now.... Vaguely, in the darkness, he put up his hand to feel
if the plaster Christ were above his head. His groping old fingers found
it, and he stayed, half-reared up against his pillows for an instant,
while he touched the drooping head with its thorny crown, and on that
familiar touch he let his hand fall, and with it fell asleep.

CHAPTER VII

GARNERED GRAIN

The next morning he was found lying as though worn out suddenly, never
to move or speak again. Only his brain was still alert as he lay there
and watched them all from under his heavy lids. Three days