They were wet through—the muscles of the men’s bodies showed through their clinging shirts and the women were wringing their gowns. But the Sunk Field was reaped and Harry’s harvest saved. He had won his battle against his own ignorance, his father’s indifference, and the earth’s treacheries. He had vindicated his daring, and he would never know how small was the thing he had done—a few scrubby acres sown and reaped, a few mean quarters of indifferent grain gathered in—he would never hear Sergeant Staples say to Sergeant Speed of the North-West Provinces that he had spent a slack afternoon cutting mustard and cress with a pocket-knife. Food was waiting up at the farm, with Thyrza Beatup, who, for obvious reasons now, had been unable to help with the harvest, but had done her best by contributing her entire stock of tinned salmon to the harvest-supper. The party began to move off, Mr. Poullett-Smith wrapping his coat over Nell’s shoulders with hands that perhaps strayed a little to touch her neck. Only Mr. Sumption was left, standing upright and stockish on the rise of the field, a huge black shape against the sky. “Come along, Mus’ Sumption,” called Ivy, “and git a nice tea-supper. Thur’s tinned salmon and a caake.” Mr. Sumption’s voice came to them on the scream of the wind— “Shall I go without thanking the Lord of the Harvest for His mercies in allowing us to gather in the fruits of the earth on the Sabbath Day?” “He’s praying,” said Nell, with a shiver of disgust in her voice. The curate bit his lip. “He’s perfectly right,” he said, and going up to the minister, he knelt down in the stubble. The others huddled in a sheepish group by the gate. Mr. Sumption’s prayer was blown over their heads, washed into the woods on the rain, but they could hear the groan of his big voice in the wind, and here and there a word of his familiar prayer-vocabulary.... “Lord ... day ... oven ... wicked ... righteous ... Satan ... save ... forgive.... Amen.” PART V: NELL 1 Autumn came, and gradually the farm-work slackened. The Bucksteep acres were cut, not much the worse for the storm—the hops were picked, and showed a fair crop of fuggles, though the goldings had not done so well. Harry sowed catch crops of trifolium and Italian rye grass, and started his autumn ploughings. Certain reactions had seized him after the harvest, and he had gone off wandering in the fields, away to villages where he had not strayed for months except to market. But the lapse had been short, for the adventure of Worge’s acres was not dead—his imagination had now its headquarters and sanctuary in the fields where he worked; he had no need to seek dreams and beauty far away, for they grew at his barndoor, and he strawed them in the furrows with his grain.