"George, you are an ass," was his very rude reply, and it seemed to ring into me far beyond his meaning. "My dear fellow, you will be, in your own parish, what nobody has seen anywhere,--a dead jackass,--if you go on like this. There is a black stripe down your arm; the same as you see on a 'mild-cured-haddy' when he shines by moonlight. What does that mean? Putrefaction." "Rot!" I replied, meaning his own words. "I'll pump on you, waistcoat and all, my dear Tom, if you go on with this sort of rubbish." And yet I had some idea that he might be right. But the worst--as I need not tell any strong young fellow--of the absurdities our worthy doctors try to screw into us now--that a man must not draw the breath the Lord breathed into him, for fear of myrio-mycelia-micro-somethings, neither dare to put his fork into the grand haunch of mutton which his Maker ordered him to arise and eat--of all such infantile stuff the harm is this, that it makes a healthy man deride the better sense that is in them. "Come to my hole, and have a smoke," I said to my dear friend. "And mind you, not a word about this scratch to my good people. To-morrow we shall cut our first field of wheat. Though it won't pay for cutting and binding, Tom, the sight is as glorious as ever. What a pity for our descendants, if we ever have any, to get no chance of ever seeing the noblest sight of Old England! Come to this gate, and take a look. In a few more years, there will be no such sight." "Poetry is all very fine in its way," replied Tom, who had about as much as I possess, although he could make a hook and eye of rhyme sometimes. "But the moon will go on all the same, I suppose; and she does most of our poetry." She was doing plenty of it now, in silence, such as any man may feel, but none can make another feel. We waited a minute or two by the gate, till a white cloud veiled the quivering disc, and then all the lustre flowed softly to our eyes, like a sea of silver playing smoothly on a shore of gold. "After all, love is rot," said Tom, carried away by larger beauty, after some snub of the day before. "I should like to see any girl who could compare with that. And a man must be a muff who could look at this, and then trouble his head about their stupid little tricks. Look at the breadth of this, look at the depth of it! Why, it lifts one; it makes one feel larger, George; that is the way to take things." "Especially when some one has been making you feel small," I answered at a venture, for I understood my friend; and this abstract worship of beauty was not so satisfactory to me now. "But come into my place, and tell me all about it, my dear Tom. You were so mysterious the other day, that I knew you were after some other wild goose."