The slanting sun and lengthening shadows brought the farmer no relief of mind; and still men, coming home from work on shaky bicycles, plied him with horrors as they passed by the gate, their knee-joints stiff with the labours of the day, seeming in want of oil. A thin, white mist began to creep along the backwater. Unmooring his punt, the fisherman came unwillingly to shore, and as he threw the fragments of his lunch into the water and gathered up his tackle, looked back upon the scene of his unfruitful labours with an air as of a man who has been overthrown by circumstances, but has preserved his honour and his faith inviolate. Slinging his basket on his back, he trudged off homewards, and instantly the fish began to rise. A line of cows was driven towards the farm, their udders all so full of milk that they swayed to and fro, just as a man sways wrapped in a Spanish cloak, and as majestically. The dragon-flies had gone, and in their place ghost-moths flew here and there across the meadows, and from the fields sounded the corncrake’s harsh, metallic note. The whirring of the reaper ceased, and when the horses were unyoked the driver led them slowly from the field. As they passed by the farmer he looked lovingly towards them, and muttered to himself, “Dead ’orses and dead soldiers lying by ’undreds in the standing corn. . . . I wonder ’ow the folks out there in Belgium will ’ave a relish for their bread next year. This ’ere war’s a ’orrid business, coming as it does, too, on the top of my own loss . . . dead ’orses in the corn. . . .” He took the straw out of his mouth, and walking up to one of his own sleek-sided carthorses, patted it lovingly, as if he wanted to make sure that it was still alive. X HIPPOMORPHOUS ON the 12th of October 1524, Cortes left Mexico on his celebrated expedition to Honduras. The start from Mexico was made to the sound of music, and all the population of the newly conquered city turned out to escort him for a few miles upon his way. The cavalcade must have been a curious spectacle enough. Cortes himself and his chief officers rode partly dressed in armour, after the fashion of the time. Then came the Spanish soldiers, mostly on foot and armed with lances, swords, and bucklers, though there was a troop of crossbowmen and harquebusiers to whom “after God” we owed the Conquest, as an old chronicler has said when speaking of the Conquest of Peru. In Mexico they did good service also, although it was the horsemen that in that conquest played the greater part. Then came a force of three thousand friendly Indians from Tlascala, and last of all a herd of swine was driven slowly in the rear, for at that time neither sheep nor cattle were known in the New World.