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Provisions had by this time increased in price, every article of common consumption was nearly doubled, and great dissatisfaction was evinced amongst the labouring poor; there were riots in many parts of the country, and much mischief was done by burning wheat-ricks, and pulling down mills, in consequence of the high price of bread.
For do not you, the London merchant, recollect how but last summer your douce and portly head-clerk was seized by two keepers in the act of wandering in Epping Forest at dead of night, with a dark lantern, a jar of strange sweet compound, and innumerable pocketfuls of pill-boxes; and found it very difficult to make either his captors or you believe that he was neither going to burn wheat-ricks, nor poison pheasants, but was simply "sugaring the trees for moths," as a blameless entomologist?
I always took care to have them amply rewarded in proportion to their exertions; and I never failed to add something, besides good words and kind treatment, for the cheerfulness and alacrity with which they approached and performed the task. I always made the wheat-ricks, and I have many times made two ricks, containing thirty loads in each rick, in one day.
Before the following spring nearly all the rick-yards were empty, and wheat-ricks, it was said, were as scarce as churches one in each parish. The situation was summed up later in a phrase which passed into a proverb: "In 1879 farmers lived on faith, in 1880 they are living on hope, and in 1881 they will have to live on charity."
The corn grown on the upland side of the borough was garnered by farmers who lived in an eastern purlieu called Durnover. Here wheat-ricks overhung the old Roman street, and thrust their eaves against the church tower; green-thatched barns, with doorways as high as the gates of Solomon's temple, opened directly upon the main thoroughfare.
This complication of weathers being uncommon, was all the more to be feared. Oak returned to the stack-yard. All was silent here, and the conical tips of the ricks jutted darkly into the sky. There were five wheat-ricks in this yard, and three stacks of barley. The wheat when threshed would average about thirty quarters to each stack; the barley, at least forty.
This complication of weathers being uncommon, was all the more to be feared. Oak returned to the stack-yard. All was silent here, and the conical tips of the ricks jutted darkly into the sky. There were five wheat-ricks in this yard, and three stacks of barley. The wheat when threshed would average about thirty quarters to each stack; the barley, at least forty.
For many years had I now made all my father's ricks of hay and corn, and the wheat-ricks were the admiration of the whole country. I also thatched many of them; that is, I made the ricks by day, and I frequently thatched them by night, or at least before the common labourers came to work in the morning.
The perception of his larger liberty, and the consequences following thereon, kept Richard silent till Sandyfield rectory, the squat-towered, Georgian church and the black-headed, yew trees in the close-packed churchyard adjoining, the neighbouring farm and its goodly show of golden-gray wheat-ricks were left behind, and the carriage entered on the flat, furze-dotted expanse of Sandyfield common.
The white thistle-down, which stays on the bursting thistles because there is no wind to waft it away, reflects it; the white is pushed aside by the colour that the stained sunbeams bring. Pale yellow thatch on the wheat-ricks becomes a deeper yellow; broad roofs of old red tiles smoulder under it. What can you call it but tawniness? the earth sunburnt once more at harvest time.
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