Not a word was spoken, the men keeping still and walking as if awestricken along by the great green bank, startling the velvet-coated blackbirds, which flew out on either side and skimmed along near the great flowery ditch, and passed over the top a hundred yards ahead. Twice over a cotton-tailed rabbit darted out of the hops and plunged into the ditch, to reach its burrow in the sandy bank, while on and on the men tramped with their burden, whose bright scarlet coat, laced with gold, stood out vividly against the green of the hops on one side and that of the tall hedge on the other. "Nay, he's only quite a boy," said Smiler, who, as soon as his remonstrance had been conscientiously disregarded, lent himself to the task with far more energy than he had directed toward carrying the pails. "Say, one of you," cried Joey, "go and lay that old bed out in the oast--one I had last year for kiln-watching." "What that there in the hop-pocket?" "That's it, lad;" and another man ran forward up the hillside. A few minutes later the burden was borne in through the wide entrance of the building to where the man who preceded them had dragged out the rough mattress used by the watcher through the night of the clear coal fires. And here in the cool shade the burden was gently laid; and the men stood round in silence, looking at the pale face before them and then at each other as if asking what to do next. "He's gone!" whispered Smiler, whose grotesque face gave him the aspect of enjoying it all as some horrible jest. For they had hardly decently composed the stiffened figure upon its soft elastic couch before it uttered a low, deep groan. "Nay," said Joey, in a whisper, "he's with us yet, lads; men don't die when you can see that." A shudder ran through the group as they leaned forward to gaze at that to which the man pointed, and there plainly to be seen in the great windowless place by the light which came in through the broad, high doorway, they gazed at a slowly-increasing stain which came out upon the scarlet tunic hard by the blackened dried-up patch there at the side. For the movement had started the wound bleeding afresh, and a bit of experience when a fellow-labourer had his arm crushed in a threshing-machine years before had taught the speaker that where bleeding continues there must be life still left in the sufferer's veins. CHAPTER THIRTY NINE. A GOOD GENIUS. They were a very ignorant rustic lot these poor farm labourers, but they knew that certain things were now necessary, and Joey, taking the lead as they waited for the help of the surgeon, gave the orders, which were executed at once. One man seized a clean bucket, and trotted off down the hill to where in the bottom there was a dark dipping place in the lonely narrow stream, and while he was fetching the clear cold water the leader carefully unfastened the tunic.