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There were the smell of the straw, the cawing of the rooks in the glen, the hissing to the breeze of the barley still standing, the swish of the scythe and the gling of the sickle, the bending and rising of the shearers, the swaying of the binders dragging the sheaves, the gluck of the wheels of the cart, the merry head of a child peeping out of a stook like a young bird out of the broken egg, and a girl in scarlet, whom Philip recognised, standing at the farthest hedge, and waving the corn band with which she was tieing to some one below.
When people walk through a field they are most liable to wander along near the edges, or go through near the middle; consequently I chose a stook situated between the two, and about thirty yards distant from the end of the field. These heaps were rather too small to form a safe hiding-place, while an unusually large one would, in all probability, attract attention.
She paused in amazement, looking round her, till the whimper was renewed; and there, almost at her feet, cradled in the fragrant hollow of a wheat stook, she saw a tiny child a baby about a year old, a fair, plump thing, just waking from sleep. At sight of the face bending over her, the child set up a louder cry, which was not angry, however, only forlorn. The tears welled fast into her blue eyes.
The oats hung their curved heads of little pendulous bells, and gave out a low murmuring sibilation its only lament that its day was over, and sun and wind no more for it. Through the high stalks gleamed now and then the lowly corn flower, and he watched for the next blue star that would shine out as they cut the golden cloud away. But the sun rose till the stook could shelter him no more.
In some of these large barns the tithe was gathered together in kind, until rather more than sixty years ago it was converted into a rent charge. Tithe was made on all kinds of farm produce. The vicar's man went into the cornfields and placed a bough in every tenth "stook"; then the titheman came with the parson's horses and took the stuff away to the barn.
"He has himsel' to blame," brook in the Gairner's wife. "She cam' o' an ill breed. He kent what she was afore he married her. Ye canna mak' a silk purse oot o' a soo's lug. Eh, na! Gin ye want a guid sheaf, gang aye to a guid stook." "You're richt there, Mistress Winton," said Mysie.
She ate her supper in a state almost too placidly joyous for excitement, and afterwards went up to her room and sat with her elbows on the window-sill and her chin on her hands, looking out. The corn had been cut and stacked in great Cornish arishmows, and Blanche, watching the orange moon swim up, told herself, "When that shadow has reached the nearest stook I will go."
Bancroft turned and found that the Elder had disappeared in the corn. He followed quickly, but as he swung himself on to the fence the Elder came from behind a stook with a burnished shot-gun in his right hand, and said decisively: "Don't come in hyar. 'Tain't your corn and you've no cause to mix yourself in this fuss." Bancroft obeyed involuntarily.
And in the harvest-field, at least, no harm could come of it; for Dooie, as she always called him, watched her like a mother; so that sometimes when she awoke, she would find a second stook of ten sheaves, with a high-uplifted crowning pair above, built at right angles to the first, to shelter her from the sun which had peered round the corner, and would soon have stared her awake.
Before the harvest on the farm of Stanewhuns arrived, Cosmo, to his desire, had cut their own corn, with Grizzie to gather, Aggie to bind, and his father to stook, and so got himself into some measure of training.
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