The last of the corn had been reaped in Cloom fields and all was ready for the ceremony of “Crying the Neck.”  The labourers, their womenfolk and children, had gathered together, and Annie, with a select party of friends, took her place in the forefront of the crowd.  A very old labourer who bore the splendid name of Melchisedec Baragwaneth, went from sheaf to sheaf, picking out a handful of the most heavily-bearded ears, which, though they are apt to grind the worst, still make the bravest show.  He was stiff with his great age and the cruel rheumatism that is the doom of the field-worker; and against the brass and leather of his boots the stubble whispered loudly.  Overhead the rooks and gulls gave short, harsh cries as they circled around hoping for stray grains; but the thousand little lives which had thriven in the corn—­the field mice and frogs and toads—­had been stilled by the sickles; some few had escaped to the shelter of the hedges, but most were sacrifices to the harvest.

Melchisedec Baragwaneth intertwined with his wheat ears some splendid stalks of ragwort and chamomile, like a cluster of yellow and white stars, and twisted tendrils of bindweed, with frail, trumpet-shaped blossoms already drooping, around the completed bunch.  His thick old fingers fumbled over the niceties of the task, but he pushed the women’s officious hands aside, and by the aid of his toothless but bone-hard gums pulled the knot to successfully, and the bunch became the “Neck.”  Then he set off, followed by the rest of the folk, to the highest field under grass, cresting the slope behind Cloom, the field that had been ploughed earth when the old Squire’s dying eyes looked on it from his bedroom window.

The last of the day still held the world, and from the western rim the sunset beat up on to one vast level stretch of cloud that nearly covered the sky, drenching it with rose-coloured light which refracted to the earth, steeping everything in one warm glow.  The stubble stood up like thin straight flames from a soil that showed wine-coloured, and the green of leaf and pasture was turned by the warmth of the light to that tender but brilliantly vivid emerald to which it wakes in the gleam of a lantern at night.  All colour was intensified, though all was suffused with the triumphant rose, which steeped sky and air and earth till they seemed infused with some impalpable wine; and the procession moved through an atmosphere full of refractions and bright edges afloat in the tender glow.

Melchisedec Baragwaneth took his stand in the middle of the field beside the tall monolith, and his followers made a huge circle about him.  Jacka’s John-Willy staggered round with a firkin of cider, and each man set his hands about its body and took a long drink.  Then Melchisedec Baragwaneth bent slowly down, holding the Neck towards the ground, and all the labourers bowed low over their billhooks.  Still more slowly the old man straightened himself, raising his arms till he held the bunch of corn high above his head, like some sylvan priest elevating the Host.  The billhooks, which a moment before had lain like shining crescents on the grass, went flashing up into blackness against the glow of the sky, and from each man came a great shout: