And what was ecstasy worth if based on a lie?  Back to the old question he came, turning it over and over, aware of it in the back of his mind even when he was thrusting it sternly away from the forefront of his attention.

He turned it over again now as the clattering binder went round and round, diminishing the square of waving gold, littering the stubble with swathes; and at every passing of it he waved to Jimmy, even when the child had forgotten his presence and was showing off for the benefit of some newcomer in the little group.  The machine was nearing the tall monolith of granite that stood up amid the corn, and Nicky was driving carefully so as not to scrape the flails against its stone side.  High as he sat on his iron perch, it towered above him, and he turned the horses carefully round it with a swirl that made Jimmy shriek for pleasure.  Jimmy leant sideways from his steed to try and slap the grey granite in passing, but could not reach it save with the end of his little whip.

The last film of standing crop fell away from before the monolith, and it reared up grim and gaunt, but sparkling with a thousand little points of light as the bright flecks in the stone caught the sun.  Nicky, who had grown rather tired of his freak, undertaken to please Jimmy, brought it, to an end with the successful negotiation of the monolith, and, getting down, went to lift Jimmy also from his perch.

“Dinner-time,” he told him, and let him sit upon his shoulder, big boy as he was, to ride to the gate.

“Come along, father,” said Nicky, slipping one hand upon Ishmael’s arm, and keeping the other folded over the slim brown ankles crossed against his chest; “I promised Lissa I wouldn’t let you tire yourself.”

They set off towards the house, the three of them, but it was Nicky who answered Jim’s eager talk as they went, and Ishmael who in silence tried to answer his own thoughts.  To one thing only he clung just then, with a blind, almost superstitious, clinging, and that to his determination to taste every moment of this harvesting, to see that everything was done in the way he liked, to watch the rhythmic procession of it while yet he could say that it was all his own.  Physically also he had not been the same man these months since the death of Archelaus.  With his uncertainty of mind as to the whole meaning of life went a feeling of insecurity about everything.  Often he had to keep a firm hold on himself not to cry aloud that the world was slipping, slipping....

When the corn was all built into the great arishmows that stood bowing towards each other like the giant dancers in some stately minuet, he was there to watch.  All day he went from field to field and watched the strong young labourers building; those on the ground tossing to those on the stooks, while the air was full of a deep rustling.  One man would crawl about on the growing mow, arranging each sheaf as it was tossed up to him, so that its feathery crown lay