dolefully what newfangled notions about machinery and manure might not also be hatching in the young owner's brain. They mounted in silence the steepest slope of the rolling land and came to a stone hedge on which John-James leant, Ishmael beside him. They stood in silence, John-James because he hardly ever spoke unless spoken to, and Ishmael because over his spirit rushed a flood of memory that for an aching moment overwhelmed him. This was the field where the Neck had been cried, when, as a little boy, he had first caught at the flying skirts of happiness, first realised the sharpness of the actual instant--and thought it surely could never, so vivid and insistent was it, cease to be.... Now, as then, his eyes sought the line of twisted hedge, and he saw it, looking so much the same, yet set with leaf and blossom so many seasons away from that August evening, even as he was himself from the child who had thought to arrest Time. Yet, realising that, he again tried to snatch at the present, though with the difference that now he told himself that anyway there was such a long, long time before him to be young in that it wouldn't ever pass.... "That's for ploughing now," announced John-James suddenly. "For the mang'ls. 'Tes as good land as any in the place, and a waste to hav'en grass, so it is. Maybe you'd like to come and have a try at it, if you'm not gwain to be above turnen your own hand to work?" Ishmael had a moment's qualm. What ploughing he had done had been but slight, and he was not free from an uneasy impression that John-James was laying a trap for him into which he would not be sorry to see him fall. It would be no better to put it off, for he could imagine the comments that would fly, so he nodded his head. "We'll set to work this morning on it," he agreed lightly; "I suppose you're still using wooden ploughs down here?" "Wooden ploughs ...? And what'd 'ee have ploughs made of, I should like to knaw? Gold, like what Arch'laus has in Australy?" "Iron. All modern ploughs are made of iron, and so are rollers." "Iron ... iron rollers. What's wrong weth a geart granite roller, lad?" "Well, it's very cumbersome, isn't it? It's three men's work to cart it from one place to another, for one thing. Anyway, I've brought down an iron plough and a chain-harrow...." Over John-James's face came a gleam of interest. "A chain-harrow?" he repeated; "I've long wanted one o' they. Us allus has to take the yard-gate off its hinges and weave furze in and out of it and drag that over the ground." "Well, now you've got a real chain-harrow and won't have to do that any more. I tell you what it is, John-James, I want you and me between us to make this the finest farm in the country; I don't want Archelaus to sneer at us when he comes home and say how much better he could have run it. Of course, I can't do it without you; but if you'll only help...." John-James held silence for a space. Then he said: