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As she passed across a breadth of cultivated ground, she noticed, with wonder, that little patches of corn mingled with the other crops had been left to over-ripeness untouched by the sickle, and that golden apples and dark figs lay rotting on the weedy earth. There were grassy spaces within sight, but no cow, or sheep, or goat.

In an hour's time we shall have plenty of light." I looked and saw the sickle of the waning moon suspended over the gulf. It shot but the feeblest glimmer along the edges of the granite pinnacles, none upon the black masses of the pine-tops. But around it the darkness held a faint violet glow, and I knew that day must be climbing close on its heels.

But you see it beautifully proved not by the presence but by the absence of the tyranny. The lawn-mower is there, of course; no one is going to propose that the lawn-mower anywhere be abolished. It is one of our modern marvels of convenience, a blessed release of countless human backs from countless hours of crouching, sickle-shaped, over the sickle.

But sometimes when the late sickle moon shines over the moor, travellers who have lost their way have been set in the right path by a lovely lady in gauzy green garments, who sprang up, as it seemed, from nowhere, and vanished away again into the mist, and to this day the children, hunting for bilberries on the hillside, call the shining dewdrops 'Ginnifer's tears."

Its position was such that it caught the sun always, and was protected from the north and east winds. Tall shafts of Indian corn with their yellow tassels were still standing, and the stubble of the field where the sickle had been showed in the distance like a carpet of gold.

Umslopogaas saw, and with a leader's instinct, acted. Springing over the parapet, followed by his remaining Zulus of the Axe, he leapt upon them with a roar. Down they went before Inkosikaas, like corn before a sickle.

And he that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth; and the earth was reaped. And another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle.

Enthroned on a "white cloud" as his chariot, and having on his royal "head a golden crown," the symbol of sovereignty, at the solicitation, the loud cry of the symbolic angel, a gospel ministry, he "thrusts in his "sharp sickle," the emblem of avenging justice, and with infinite ease, "the earth is reaped."

Under the crescent moon, in those mild September evenings, the old superstitions of the Saxon Druids are repeated, while many a beautiful Norma, crowned with vervain and mistletoe, a gleaming sickle in her hand, and her eyes filled with the prophetic light of love, reigns a queen over the honest loving hearts of swains who lay at her feet the brightest wisps of the upland.

Kate had not looked up when Philip came into the field, but she had seen him come, and she gave a little start when he took his place in his shirt-sleeves beside her. He used some conventional phrases which she scarcely answered, and then nothing was heard but the sounds of the sickle and the corn.