Harris was a dangerous-looking customer for all his years, strong as a bull, with a low, ape-like forehead, badger-gray hair, and long, ungainly arms that seemed to have been bowed by the carrying of trusses of hay. ‘You know what I mean,’ he said. ‘And I’ll tell you another thing. We don’t want no bleedin’ outsiders here, snatching the bread out of our mouths.’ Violence would surely have followed, but at the most dangerous moment the farmer and his daughters arrived. The reaping of the twelve-acre field was almost finished, a huge expanse of stubble lay gleaming under the noon-day sun, and crackled with heat. In the midst of the field a square of barley stood unreaped and shimmering, and within it cowered a secret multitude of field-mice, hares, and rabbits that the destruction of their homes had driven inwards. Mr Prosser and Marion carried guns, and Ethel was playing with three dogs that sniffed and trembled with eagerness for this annual pastime of slaughter. ‘Now, Harris, let’s get a move on!’ said the farmer. The horses, that had stood stamping and swishing their tails and flicking flies from their ears in the shade of an elder-bush, were brought round with cries of encouragement, and the machine rolled clanking over the stubble towards the standing corn. Prosser and his daughters stayed behind in the hedgerow, the day’s work went on, and as the square diminished, narrowing with each turn of the machine, the dogs sniffed along the edge of that narrow sanctuary until the guns were ready. ‘Give Miss Marion a hand with her loading, Fellows,’ Prosser shouted. ‘Tell the men to get their sticks ready, Harris, and we’ll put the dogs in on the far side.’ Abner and Marion stood together with the sun beating on their backs. The dogs ran barking into the corn. Above them, in the eye of the sun, a kestrel hovered. Three frightened rabbits bolted from the farther edge. Prosser fired two barrels and killed one. Another was wounded, and Harris ran after it with ungainly strides and stick uplifted. He brought down the stick with a savage cry and dashed out the animal’s brains. ‘I got him, the varmint!’ he shouted. The multitude within the square of corn trembled. One by one, terror drove them out into the open. Marion fired twice and missed. Her hands shook as she gave the gun to Abner to reload. She could not see her pitiful target; she saw nothing but the young man at her side with his sun-bleached hair, his red chest and neck, and the milk-white skin above the roll of his shirt sleeves. ‘Quick! You’m missing of them!’ he cried. She fired again, and missed. She could hit nothing. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me,’ she said. ‘I think I’ve been too long in the sun. You’d better take the gun yourself.’