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Everywhere were scattered houses, purple crops of buckwheat, green fields of young wheat, yellow millet, broad green plantains, and orange groves. We crossed spur after spur, often under or over precipices about fifteen hundred feet above the river, proceeding eastwards to the village of Rangang, whence we caught sight of the Rajah's house.

It was December, and the harvest was not yet all got in, the spring corn had never grown, and the wheat was rusty; there was, he well knew, another deficiency in the revenue, to be counted by millions; wise men shook their heads and said the trade was leaving the country, and it was rumoured that the whole population of Paisley lived on the rates.

Max had ceased to look about him, ceased to observe the streets that grew more crowded, more brightly lighted as they made their downward way. Blake smiled. "The tares among the wheat, eh?" "Yes." "Oh, of course I admit the tares among the wheat; but such growths are mostly unsatisfactory. Forced fruit is never precisely the same as wild fruit." "Why not?"

When wheat is scarce, the farmer raises his price; and when a mechanic offers services difficult to be obtained, he makes a corresponding increase of price. And why is it not right for domestics to act according to a rule allowed to be correct in reference to all other trades and professions?

It seems at first strange that it can answer to kill mares for such a trifle; but as it is thought ridiculous in this country ever to break in or ride a mare, they are of no value except for breeding. The only thing for which I ever saw mares used, was to tread out wheat from the ear, for which purpose they were driven round a circular enclosure, where the wheat-sheaves were strewed.

Which of us has coveted your silver or your gold? Which of us has stretched out the hand to take of your wheat or your barley? All we ask is room to live! But because ye would see the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, ye have crushed and straitened us till we are ready to cry out, 'God, for thy mercy's sake, let us die, lest we be guilty of our own blood!"

Footpaths were concealed by the second year, but roads could be traced, though as green as the sward, and were still the best for walking, because the tangled wheat and weeds, and, in the meadows, the long grass, caught the feet of those who tried to pass through.

Masses of silver spruce, like trees in moonlight, bordered the park, sending out here and there an isolated tree, sharp as a spear, with under-branches close to the ground. Long golden-green grass, resembling half-ripe wheat, covered the entire floor of the park, gently waving to the wind.

One of Selkirk's acquaintances met him strolling along Pall Mall, and brought him up short on the street with the query: 'If you are bent on doing something futile, why do you not sow tares at home in order to reap wheat, or plough the desert of Sahara, which is nearer?

And so it came about that every day at the red dawn Ruth went singing down the rocky pathway to work with the reapers in the warm Eastern valley; and as the wheat harvest followed close upon the barley harvest, she worked for many days, returning home at night with her ruddy cheeks burnt brown with the sun, to lay her heap on the floor of her mother's house; for they were laying up a little store with which to bake bread in the months of wind and rain that were before them in the coming winter.