the carthorse has to be husbanded carefully, and the labour performed must be adjusted to it and to the food, i.e. fuel, consumed.  To manage a large team of horses, so as to keep them in good condition, with glossy coats and willing step, and yet to get the maximum of work out of them, requires long experience and constant attention.  The carter, therefore, is a man of much importance on a farm.  If he is up to his duties he is a most valuable servant; if he neglects them he is a costly nuisance, not so much from his pay, but because of the hindrance and disorganisation of the whole farm-work which such neglect entails.

Foggers and milkers, if their cottages are near at hand, having finished the first part of the day’s work, can often go back home to breakfast, and, if they have a good woman in the cottage, find a fire and hot tea ready.  The carter can rarely leave his horses for that, and, therefore, eats his breakfast in the stable; but then he has the advantage that up to the time of starting forth he is under cover.  The fogger and milker, on the other hand, are often exposed to the most violent tempests.  A gale of wind, accompanied with heavy rain, often readies its climax just about the dawn.  They find the soil saturated, and the step sinks into it—­the furrows are full of water; the cow-yard, though drained, is a pool, no drain being capable of carrying it off quick enough.  The thatch of the sheds drips continually; the haystack drips; the thatch of the stack, which has to be pulled off before the hay-knife can be used, is wet; the old decaying wood of the rails and gates is wet.  They sit on the three-legged milking-stool (whose rude workmanship has taken a dull polish from use) in a puddle; the hair of the cow, against which the head is placed, is wet; the wind blows the rain into the nape of the neck behind, the position being stooping.  Staggering under the heavy yoke homewards, the boots sink deep into the slush and mire in the gateways, the weight carried sinking them well in.  The teams do not usually work in very wet weather, and most of the out-door work waits; but the cattle must be attended to, Sundays and holidays included.  Even in summer it often happens that a thunderstorm bursts about that time of the morning.  But in winter, when the rain is driven by a furious wind, when the lantern is blown out, and the fogger stumbles in pitchy darkness through mud and water, it would be difficult to imagine a condition of things which concentrates more discomfort.

If, as often happens, the man is far from home—­perhaps he has walked a mile or two to work—­of course he cannot change his clothes, or get near a fire, unless in the farmer’s kitchen.  In some places the kitchen is open to the men, and on Sundays, at all events, they get a breakfast free.  But the kindly old habits are dying out before the hard-and-fast money system and the abiding effects of Unionism, which, even when not prominently displayed, causes a silent, sullen estrangement.