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"According to the decree of his Imperial Majesty " the judge began reading the sentence. The case concerned that very woman. She had taken away half a bundle of oats as she was passing the thrashing-floor of a landowner. The justice of the peace sentenced her to two months' imprisonment. The landowner whose oats had been stolen was among the audience.
Had the wine-casks been scoured and lined with pitch; had the house-cleaning been done; had the grain been taken from the thrashing-floor to the granary; had manure been thrown from the stables and cow-houses and piled into heaps; had the seed been winnowed; had any rope been made; had the old rope been repaired, and had he seen that the slaves mended their coats and caps.
"Oh, is it," said the farmer's son who stood with his father on the thrashing-floor shaking out some straw. "Well, that's as it may be!" "Ay, but she says you're the father." "Oh, does she! Can she prove it, I'd like to know." "She can take her oath on it, she can. So you had better marry the girl." The farmer's son shouted with laughter. "Oh, you laugh, do you?"
But the king made answer, that he took his generosity and magnanimity loudly, and accepted his good-will, but he desired him to take the price of them all, for that it was not just to offer a sacrifice that cost nothing. And when Araunah said he would do as he pleased, he bought the thrashing-floor of him for fifty shekels.
When," said he solemnly, and looking upward, "wilt thou come with thy fanners to purge the thrashing-floor?" Mont-Fitchet took the letter from his Superior, and was about to peruse it.
"And who is this stalwart fellow whose staff has done more execution than both our sword-blades?" the young count asked; "verily it rose and fell like a flail on a thrashing-floor." "He is one of Dame Margaret's retainers, and the captain of a band of archers in her service, but is at present here as one of her men-at-arms." "In truth I envy her so stout a retainer.
He says himself that he never feared a competitor in any species of rural exertion; and Gilbert, a man of uncommon bodily strength, adds that neither he, nor any labourer he ever saw at work, was equal to him, either in the cornfield or on the thrashing-floor. Before his sixteenth year Burns had read a large amount of literature.
At this time somewhat appeared to him in the shape of a young man, and told him that he was a happy man, and beloved of God. To which he immediately replied, "A mighty indication of God's favor to me, that I am forced to use this wine-press instead of a thrashing-floor!" But the appearance exhorted him to be of good courage, and to make an attempt for the recovery of their liberty.
They'd been thrashing the oats at the thrashing-floor, and they hadn't finished; they hadn't time to rake up the last heap; well, they 'd set two watch-men by it for the night, and they weren't the boldest-hearted of the chaps either. Well, they were sitting and gossiping, and Efrem takes and stuffs his shirt-sleeves full of straw, ties up the wrist-bands, and puts the shirt up over his head.
And so he steals up in that shape to the thrashing-floor, and just pops out from behind the corner and gives them a peep of his horns. One chap says to the other: "Do you see?" "Yes," says the other, and didn't he give a screech all of a sudden ... and then the fences creaked and nothing more was seen of them. Efrem shovelled up the oats into a bag and dragged it off home.
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