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A sacrifice is offered to the tree; and next morning the youth of both sexes, linked arm-in-arm, dance in a great circle round the Karma-tree, which is decked with strips of coloured cloth and sham bracelets and necklets of plaited straw. As a preparation for the festival, the daughters of the headman of the village cultivate blades of barley in a peculiar way.

The district of Amuanshi in which Sanehat settled was a goodly land, bearing figs and grapes and olives, flowing with wine and honey and oil, yielding barley and wheat without end, and much cattle. This abundance points rather to the hill country near Hebron or between there and Belt Jibrin, as this south part of the hills is notably fertile.

Farmer Jones was sure the frost had killed the wheat. Farmer Wilson said the rye would never come up. Brown, the malster, insisted the barley was dead at the root. Butcher Jobbins said beef would be a shilling a pound. All declared there would not be a hop to brew with.

Strain the water from the barley and add this last to the meat, and let it simmer for two hours. Then strain off the liquor and pound the meat and barley in a mortar, rub it through a sieve; when it is a smooth puree put it back into the pan with its liquor and a gill of cream. Let it simmer again for a moment and serve it in a cup with a lid to it.

As a salve to my conscience and common sense, however, I took a measure of precaution. Coming over the crown of a bit of a rise in the road, I clapped down suddenly among the barley and lay waiting. After a while, a man went by that looked to be a Highlandman, but I had never seen him till that hour. Presently after came Neil of the red head.

"Once for all," I said, "it is below me, and I won't do it." Thereupon, the girls, knowing my way, ceased to torment me about it: but what was my astonishment the very next day to perceive that instead of fourteen reapers, we were only thirteen left, directly our breakfast was done with or mowers rather I should say, for we were gone into the barley now. "Who has been and left his scythe?"

Hilary's remark was founded upon the experience of long years such experience as is only to be found in farmhouses where kindred succeed each other, and hand down practical observations from father to son. The thistles were showing rather strongly in the barley the result of last year's rain and the consequent impossibility of proper clearing.

The sole value of his treatise lies in certain statistical details with regard to the cost and profits of different crops, prices of food, rates of wages, etc. By his showing, the profit of an acre of wheat in 1780 was £2 10s; of barley, £3 3s 6d; of buckwheat, £2 19s; and a farm of one hundred and fifty acres, judiciously managed, would leave a profit of £379.

On mounds of earth made for the purpose, there are divers old men who sit praying, and who give the people three or four straws, which they hold between their fingers when they bathe in the Ganges; and some sit to mark them in the forehead: And the devotees have each a cloth with a small quantity of rice, barley, or money, which they give to these old men when they have washed.

Brethren, these three things, making God the end of my work; making God's will the law of my work; making God's strength the power of my work; these are the ways by which we, too, can bring our little pile of barley bread, and lay it upon that table. Again, this consecration of life's activities is to be carried out by treating their products, as well as themselves, as offerings to God.