onthly ones.

"There were two thrashers, and the head thrasher used always to go
before the reapers. A man could cut according to the goodness of the
job, half-an-acre a day. The terms of wages were _L_3 10_s._ to 50_s._
for the month.

"When the hay was in cock or the wheat in shock, then the Titheman come;
you didn't dare take up a field without you let him know. If the
Titheman didn't come at the time, you tithed yourself. He marked his
sheaves with a bough or bush. You couldn't get over the Titheman. If you
began at a hedge and made the tenth cock smaller than the rest, the
Titheman might begin in the middle just where he liked. The Titheman at
Harting, old John Blackmore, lived at Mundy's [South Harting Street].
His grandson is blacksmith at Harting now. All the tithing was quiet.
You didn't dare even set your eggs till the Titheman had been and ta'en
his tithe. The usual day's work was from 7 to 5."

[Sidenote: A SUSSEX WITCH]

Like all Sussex villages, Harting has had its witches and possessors of
the evil eye. Most curious of these was old Mother Digby (_nee_ Mollen),
who, in Mr. Gordon's words, lived at a house in Hog's Lane, East
Harting, and had the power of witching herself into a hare, and was
continually, like Hecate, attended by dogs. Squire Russell, of Tye Oak,
always lost his hare at the sink-hole of a drain near by the old lady's
house. One day the dogs caught hold of the hare by its hind quarters,
but it escaped down the drain, and Squire Russell, instantly opening the
old beldame's door, found her rubbing the part of her body corresponding
to that by which the hound had seized the hare. Squire Caryll, however,
declined to be hard on the broomstick and its riders, as the following
entry in the records of the Court Leet, held for the Hundred of Dumford
in 1747, shows:--"Also we present the Honble. John Caryll, Esq., Lord of
this Mannor, for not having and keeping a Ducking Stool within the said
Hundred of Dumford according to law, for the ducking of scolds and other
disorderly persons."

[Sidenote: THE BEACON FIRES]

The road from South Harting to Elsted runs under the hills, which here
rise abruptly from the fields, to great heights, notably Beacon Hill,
like a huge green mammoth, 800 feet high, on which, before the days of
telegraphy, lived the signaller, who passed on the tidings of danger on
the coast to the next beacon hill, above Henley, and so on to London. In
the days of Napoleon, when a