He was not long in finding out who was the real ruler of The Dyke and that Mr Prosser, for all his commanding figure, stood for nothing. When the men knocked off for their dinner at midday and the two girls came down the field carrying ‘baggins’ of bread and cheese and great jugs of harvest beer, they would wink at each other and say: ‘Here comes the boss!’ Marion scarcely ever spoke to him more than a word, but her eyes were conscious of him, and he always felt that he was working under her scrutiny. Whenever they spoke together he was aware of the fact that it was she who had got him his job and that she could take it away from him as easily. When he came back from his work at night Mary would ask him questions about her old friend, but he could never satisfy her. ‘Does she know that you come from here?’ she would say. ‘Of course she knows. I told her at the first.’ ‘But she’s never mentioned me? Never asked after me?’ ‘We’ve never spoke ten words together.’ ‘It’s funny, that! When you come to think of her and me having slept in the same bed. . . . She must know about me!’ ‘She’s a rum ’un, Miss Marion. There’s no getting away from that.’ He and Mary never saw much of each other in those days, for Abner had to get up very early in the morning in time for his seven mile walk, and the harvest labour was severe. Severe, and yet pleasant, for the summer weather held and no rain fell. The sun shone pitilessly on the whitening stubbles, but the corn-fields of The Dyke were so lifted upon the back of the hills that they seemed to be part of a high cloudland and free from all heaviness. On the lower levels the whir of reaping machines might be heard, but higher up the fields were so unlevel, following the broken contour of the hills and bounded by the sloping ramparts of the dyke, that all the reaping must be done with sickles and the dry shocks carried to the head of a rough road. Abner had not the skill to wield a sickle, and so in this part of the labour he was useless. Harris, the labourer, who acted as foreman when Mr Prosser was not in the fields, resented this. Before Marion’s interest in the farm began he had been his master’s right-hand man. He had been present at the time when Abner was first employed by Mr Prosser, and knowing that the newcomer was a protégé of Miss Marion’s, was naturally jealous. When the men sat in the shade of a hedgerow for lunch he grumbled to his mates and grudged Abner his share of the food. The two casual labourers were inclined to take Harris’s side; but old Avery, a man of sixty who had worked at The Dyke all his life, stood up for Abner. ‘I don’t know what the place is coming to,’ Harris said. ‘We don’t want no navvies here. There’s too many about as it is. ’Tis a farming man’s job, reaping. I reckon you’re one of Miss Marion’s fancies. You’d a’ better look out!’ The men laughed, and Abner asked him what the hell he meant.