The problem of harvesting had worried him for a long time, for Mus’ Beatup absolutely refused to buy a steam reaper-and-binder; he wurn’t going to take no risks in war-time, and Harry must make what shift he could with the old horse machine, which had trundled slowly round the few acres of earlier Worge harvests, and must even trundle round the width of this new venture. In vain Harry pointed out the labour needed for binding—he must get help, that was all; the family would turn to, as it always did in harvest time. The absence of Ivy was a hard blow—for she practically did the work of a man—but he found an unexpected substitute in the curate, who with the other country clergy had been episcopally urged to lend a hand in harvest time. Mr. Poullett-Smith had watched young Beatup’s effort with an approval which condoned his wobblings between Church and chapel, and felt, moreover, that his help might send a balance down on the Church side. He was a little scandalised to find soon after that Harry had also drawn in the Rev. Mr. Sumption—the curate’s offer put it into his head; besides, it was just the sort of thing one asked of Mr. Sumption—it seemed far more his job than preaching or praying. The other helpers would just be the family, this time including Nell, for where her parson went she could go also, in spite of stained and welted hands. Elphick and Juglery could do about one man’s work between them, and there was a boy over school age on the loose in the village, who was hired for ten shillings and his meals. Harry had written to Tom and told him of his maturing plans, but either his marriage had breached him from Worge, or the fact that the disciple had gone so much further than his master had made his anxious ardour cool away. His latest communication had been a field postcard, which, as he had forgotten to put a cross against any of its various items, presented a bewildering and conflicting mass of information, which Harry flipped into the coals with a wry smile. However, he was able to stand alone, for he dared the chances of his new deeds. Oafish as he looked in his Sunday suit and gasper collar, the adventure of harvest was upon him as he jolted the old trap home under the moon. “Behold, the fields stand white to harvest” ... the words drifted like a cloud over his brain. These fields that he had prepared, that his plough had torn and his harrow broken, were fields of battle like the fields in France. On them he had fought, for the same reason as Tom fought the Germans, all the treacheries and assaults of nature, her raiding winds, her storming rains, her undermining rottenness in the soil, her blasting of thunder and choking of heat. “Reckon to-morrow’s our Big Push,” he said to his father, rather proud of the metaphor, and was careful that the old horse did not hurry stablewards too quickly, lest they should be home before the closing of the Rifle Volunteer, and lose a soldier thereby. 13