and 16 feet above was the floor on which the hops were dried.  Anthracite coal was used for fuel, the fire being maintained day and night throughout the picking—­the morning’s picking drying between 1 p.m. and 12 midnight, and the afternoon’s picking between 1 a.m. and 12 o’clock noon.  Tom was therefore on duty for the whole twenty-four hours, with what snatches of sleep he could catch in the initial stage of each drying and at odd moments.

The process requires great skill and attention; at first he and I, with what little knowledge I had, puzzled it out together, he having had no previous experience, and night after night I sat up with him till the load came off the kiln at midnight.  A slight excess of heat, or an irregular application of it, will spoil the hops, the principle being to raise the temperature, very gradually at first, to 30 or 40 degrees higher at the finish.  Hops should be blown dry by a blast of hot air, not baked by heat alone.  The drier, of course, has to keep a watchful eye on the thermometer on the upper floor among the hops—­Tom always called it the “theometer”—­regulating his fire accordingly and the admission of cold air through adjustable ventilators on the outside walls.  This regulation varies according to the weather, the moisture of the air, and the condition of the hops, and calls for critical judgment and accuracy.  Often, tired out with the previous ordinary day’s work, we had much ado to keep awake at night, and it was fatal to arrange a too comfortable position with the warmth of the glowing fire and the soporific scent of the hops.  Then Tom would announce that it was “time to get them little props out,” which, in imagination, were to support our wearied eyelids.

When we decided that the hops were ready to be cooled down, to prevent breaking when being taken off the drying floor, all doors, windows, and ventilators were thrown open and the fire banked up, and, while they were cooling, he went to neighbouring cottages to rouse the men who came nightly to unload and reload the kiln, and then I could retire to bed.

Tom was devoted to duty, and was so successful as a hop-drier that he soon became capable of managing two more kilns in the same building, which I enlarged as I gradually increased my acreage.  In a good season he would often have L100 worth of hops through his hands in the twenty-four hours, sometimes more.  He was the only man I ever employed at this particular work, and throughout those years he turned out hops to the value of nearly L30,000 without a single mishap or spoiled kiln-load—­a better proof of his devotion to duty than anything else I could say.

He was a very picturesque figure when, “crowned with the sickle and the wheaten sheaf, Autumn comes jovial on,” and he was cutting wheat, his head covered with a coloured handkerchief, knotted at the corners, to protect the back of his neck from the sun, which must have been much cooler than the felt hat—­a kind of “billycock” with a flat top—­which he habitually wore.  I have noticed that the labourer’s style of hat is a matter of great conservatism, probably due to the fancy that he would “look odd” in any other, and would be liable to chaff from his fellow-workers.