At such times you see every little dyke or embankment with a crowd of bustling villagers, each with a heavy bundle of grain on his head, hurrying to and fro like a stream of busy ants.  The women, with clothes tucked up above the knee, plod and plash through the water.  They go at a half run, a kind of fast trot, and hardly a word is spoken—­garnering the rice crops is too important an operation to dawdle and gossip over.  Each hurries off with his burden to the little family threshing-floor, dumps down his load, gives a weary grunt, straightens his back, gives a yawn, then off again to the field for another load.  It is no use leaving a bundle on the field; where food is so eagerly looked for by such a dense population, where there are hungry mouths and empty stomachs in every village, a bundle of rice would be gone by the morning.

As in Greece, where every man has to watch his vineyard at night, so here, the kureehan or threshing-floor each has its watchman at night.  For the protection of the growing crops, the villagers club together, and appoint a watchman or chowkeydar, whom they pay by giving him a small percentage on the yield; or a small fractional proportion of the area he has to guard, with its standing crop, may be made over to him as a recompense.

They thresh out the rice when it has matured a little on the threshing-floor.  Four to six bullocks are tied in a line to a post in the centre, and round this they slowly pace in a circle.  They are not muzzled, and the poor brutes seem rather to enjoy the unwonted luxury of feeding while they work.  When there is a good wind, the grain is winnowed; it is lifted either in bamboo scoops or in the two hands.  The wind blows the chaff or bhoosa on to a heap, and the fine fresh rice remains behind.  The grain merchants now do a good business.  Rice must be sold to pay the rent, the money-lender, and other clamouring creditors.  The bunniahs will take repayment in kind.  They put on the interest, and cheat in the weighments and measurements.  So much has to be given to the weigh-man as a perquisite.  If seed had been borrowed, it has now to be returned at a ruinous rate of interest.  Some seed must be saved for next year, and an average poor ryot, the cultivator of but a little holding, very soon sees the result of his harvesting melt away, leaving little for wife and little ones to live on.  He never gets free of the money-lender.  He will have to go out and work hard for others, as well as get up his own little lands.  No chance of a new bullock this year, and the old ones are getting worn out and thin.  The wife must dispense with her promised ornament or dress.  For the poor ryot it is a miserable hand-to-mouth existence when crops are poor.  As a rule he is never out of debt.  He lives on the scantiest fare; hunger often pinches him; he knows none of the luxuries of life.  Notwithstanding all, the majority are patient, frugal, industrious,