It was a joy to be out of doors under such a sky.  The intense, repressing greens of summer were now subdued and shaded.  The air was subtle and fragrant.  Amber rays shone through the boughs.  The hills were clothed in purple.  An exquisite, impalpable haze idealized all nature.  Right and left the reapers swept their sharp sickles through the ripe wheat.  The women went after them, binding the sheaves, and singing among the yellow swaths shrill, wild songs, full of simple modulations.

The squire’s field was busy as a fair; and the idle young people sat under the oaks, or walked slowly in the shadow of the hedges, pulling poppies and wild flowers, and realizing all the poetry of a pastoral life, without any of its hard labor or its vulgar cares.  Mrs. Sandal had given them a basket with berries and cake and cream in it.  They were all young enough to get pleasantly hungry in the open air, all young enough to look upon berries and cake and cream as a distinct addition to happiness.  They set out a little feast under the trees, and called the squire to come and taste their dainties.

He was standing, without his coat and vest, on the top of a loaded wain, the very embodiment of a jovial, handsome, country gentleman.  The reins were in his hand; he was going to drive home the wealthy wagon; but he stopped and stooped, and Charlotte, standing on tip-toes, handed him a glass of cream.  “God love thy bonny face,” he said, with a beaming smile, as he handed her back the empty glass.  Then off went the great horses with their towering load, treading carefully between the hedges of the narrow lane, and leaving upon the hawthorns many a stray ear for the birds gleaning.

When the squire returned he called to Julius and his daughters, “What idle-backs you are!  Come, and bind a sheaf with me.”  And they rose with a merry laugh, and followed him down the field, working a little, and resting a little; and towards the close of the afternoon, listening to the singing of an old man who had brought his fiddle to the field in order to be ready to play at the squire’s “harvest-home.”  He was a thin, crooked, old man, very spare and ruddy.  “Eighty-three years old, young sir,” he said to Julius; and then, in a trembling, cracked voice, he quavered out,—­

    “Says t’ auld man to t’ auld oak-tree,
     Young and lusty was I when I kenned thee: 
     I was young and lusty, I was fair and clear,
     Young and lusty was I, many a long year. 
     But sair failed is I, sair failed now;
     Sair failed is I, since I kenned thou. 
                    Sair failed, honey,
                    Sair failed now;
                    Sair failed, honey,
                    Since I kenned thou.”

It was the appeal of tottering age to happy, handsome youth, and Julius could not resist it.  With a royal grace he laid a guinea in the old man’s open palm, and felt fully rewarded by his look of wonder and delight.