"Come along, father," said Nicky, slipping one hand upon Ishmael's arm, and keeping the other folded over the slim brown ankles crossed against his chest; "I promised Lissa I wouldn't let you tire yourself." They set off towards the house, the three of them, but it was Nicky who answered Jim's eager talk as they went, and Ishmael who in silence tried to answer his own thoughts. To one thing only he clung just then, with a blind, almost superstitious, clinging, and that to his determination to taste every moment of this harvesting, to see that everything was done in the way he liked, to watch the rhythmic procession of it while yet he could say that it was all his own. Physically also he had not been the same man these months since the death of Archelaus. With his uncertainty of mind as to the whole meaning of life went a feeling of insecurity about everything. Often he had to keep a firm hold on himself not to cry aloud that the world was slipping, slipping.... When the corn was all built into the great arishmows that stood bowing towards each other like the giant dancers in some stately minuet, he was there to watch. All day he went from field to field and watched the strong young labourers building; those on the ground tossing to those on the stooks, while the air was full of a deep rustling. One man would crawl about on the growing mow, arranging each sheaf as it was tossed up to him, so that its feathery crown lay towards the centre, away from chance of rain. At last it was all finished--all the precious grain tucked away out of possible harm in the heart of the arishmows, save for the feathery bunch at the crest that fastened all off with a flourish. It had been a lovely task, the building of the arishmows, for, like all work to do with the land, it was the perfection of rhythm, and this, added to the unending flow of tossing and packing, held always that lovely rustling of stalk and ear as an accompaniment of music to the action. Not many days later and the stately arishmows were destroyed and the sheaves brought in on waggons and built into great stacks in the field which lay next to the farmyard, where the threshing would take place. There was a pile of the dredge-corn, another of deeply-golden oats, a third of the greyer-tinted wheat, which was a little smaller than the other two, though that also was as high as the roof of the barn.