Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Carol David and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
[Illustration: [[Latin inscription: TOVT BIEN OV BIEN]]]
It was an August evening, still and cloudy after a day unusually chillyfor the time of year. Now, about sunset, the temperature was warmer thanit had been in the morning, and the departing sun was forcing its waythrough the clouds, breaking up their level masses into delicatelatticework of golds and greys. The last radiant light was on thewheat-fields under the hill, and on the long chalk hill itself. Againstthat glowing background lay the village, already engulfed by theadvancing shadow. All the nearer trees, which the daylight had mingledin one green monotony, stood out sharp and distinct, each in its ownplane, against the hill. Each natural object seemed to gain a newaccent, a more individual beauty, from the vanishing and yet lingeringsunlight.
An elderly labourer was walking along the road which led to the village.To his right lay the allotment gardens just beginning to be alive withfigures, and the voices of men and children. Beyond them, far ahead,rose the square tower of the church; to his left was the hill, andstraight in front of him the village, with its veils of smoke lightlybrushed over the trees, and its lines of cottages climbing the chalksteeps behind it.
His eye as he walked took in a number of such facts as life had trainedit to notice. Once he stopped to bend over a fence, to pluck a stalk ortwo of oats; he examined them carefully, then he threw back his head andsniffed the air, looking all round the sky meanwhile. Yes, the seasonhad been late and harsh, but the fine weather was coming at last. Two orthree days' warmth now would ripen even the oats, let alone the wheat.
Well, he was glad. He wanted the harvest over. It would, perhaps, be hislast harvest at Clinton Magna, where he had worked, man and boy, forfifty-six years come Michaelmas. His last harvest! A curious pleasurestirred the man's veins as he thought of it, a pleasure in expectedchange, which seemed to bring back the pulse of youth, to loosen alittle the yoke of those iron years that had perforce aged and bent him;though, for sixty-two, he was still hale and strong.
Things had all come together. Here was 'Muster' Hill, the farmer he hadworked for these seventeen years, dying of a sudden, with a carbuncle onthe neck, and the farm to be given up at Michaelmas. He—JohnBolderfield—had been working on for the widow; but, in his opinion, shewas 'nobbut a caselty sort of body,' and the sooner she and her childrenwere taken off to Barnet, where they were to live with her mother, theless she'd cost them as had the looking after her. As for the crops,they wouldn't pay the debts; not they. And there was no one after thefarm—'nary one'—and didn't seem like to be. That would make anotherfarm on Muster Forrest's hands. Well, and a good job. Landlords must be'took down'; and there was plenty of work going on the railway just nowfor those that were turned off.
[Illustration: The Village of Aldbury BU KİTABI OKUMAK İÇİN ÜYE OLUN VEYA GİRİŞ YAPIN!
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