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The crowing of cocks near and more remote, the chirping of little birds under the eaves, began and increased. A laborer, then another, on their way to work, passed within sight along a field-path leading to the mill; a troop of reapers came by the same road. Then there was the pleasant sound of sharpening a scythe, and Bessie saw a gardener on the lawn stoop to his task.
Sam might well exclaim, for Harry was beginning to help him, and had seized the scythe. With cut number one he had shaved off the top of a fine verbena. With cut number two, he had driven the point of the sharp tool into the sod. Where the third cut would have gone, I can't say; for Sam, hobbling up to the young workman, the young workman frisked off, and seized the barrow half full of grass.
The under gardener, mowing, saw Tom, and threw down his scythe; caught his leg in it, and cut his shin open, whereby he kept his bed for a week; but in his hurry he never knew it, and gave chase to poor Tom. The dairymaid heard the noise, got the churn between her knees, and tumbled over it, spilling all the cream; and yet she jumped up, and gave chase to Tom.
The next day, very early in the morning, he came quite naked into the street, having only a scarf about his middle, holding in his hand a scythe, and tossing about his hair as the priests of Cybele; then getting on the top of a high altar, he said that the place was happy to be honoured by the birth of a god.
But before the close- serried lines of the English, with their physical strength and veteran practice in their own special arm, the Norman foot were mowed as by the scythe. In vain, in the intervals, thundered the repeated charges of the fiery knights; in vain, throughout all, came the shaft and the bolt.
They struggled courageously and faithfully, but they were at a disadvantage. The mowing-machine and the reaper had taken the place of the scythe and cradle. The singing of the whetstone upon steel was heard no longer in the meadows nor among the ripened grain. The harrow had cast out the hoe. The work of the farm was accomplished by patent devices in wood and steel.
Some different from the ornamental wreath 'round our clock face, that hain't more'n half an inch wide, if it is that. Our clock has a picture underneath of old Time with his scythe a mowin' down the hours and minutes as his nater his.
They passed through the little garden, sparkling with dew, and beside the byre, where Hawkie rattled her chain, impatient for Bell's coming, and by Saunders' little strip of corn ready for the scythe, till they reached an open field. There they came to a halt, and Doctor MacLure for once allowed himself to go.
They agreed to give him what he wanted for the scythe, and he received a horse laden with as much gold as it could carry. And now the third brother wanted to take his cat to the right man. He fared just like the others; so long as he stayed on the mainland there was nothing to be done. Every place had cats, and there were so many of them that new-born kittens were generally drowned in the ponds.
Nearly every morning after this he insisted on working in the fields. Sometimes it was with a plow, which he learned to use under the advice of Tobe Barnett, a scythe in the hay-field, or a woodman's ax in the depths of the forests. But still sorrow and shame brooded over him like a material pall that refused to be put aside.
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