“Are you tired, Grandad?”

“Yes,” said Ishmael.

“Nice tired or nasty tired?”

“Nice tired,” said Ishmael; “old men and little boys both go nice tired.”

“Like the thresher?” persisted Jimmy, and, receiving an answer that satisfied him, allowed his grandfather to carry him in to bed, though he could have gone in so much more quickly himself, for grandpapa could not run with him on his shoulder as his father could.  But Jimmy was in no hurry, because every minute gained was a minute out of bed and in this wonderful world where threshers hummed and golden clouds wove themselves ceaselessly in the air.

Ishmael too felt very tired, as he had said; but, as he had also said, it was a pleasant tiredness.  His day had been too full for thought other than of what was happening before his eyes.  An exquisite sense of fitness, of something that was falling into place as everything in the history of the harvest had done, a sense as of gathered sheaves and stored grain, was with him, though sub-consciously.  His brain felt filled with visual impressions, his old eyes held a riot of blue and gold, and a humming was still in his ears.  As he closed his lids that night golden motes danced within them.

He sank off into sleep, and then drifted, half-awake again, to that state when the mind is not fully aware of where it is or of what has happened.  It seemed to him, for one blurred moment, that he was a little boy again, falling to sleep on that evening when the Neck was cried ...; and then, out of the far past, came back to him the remembrance that it was at the Vicarage he had slept that night.  Something told him he was not there now....  Vaguely, in the darkness, he put up his hand to feel if the plaster Christ were above his head.  His groping old fingers found it, and he stayed, half-reared up against his pillows for an instant, while he touched the drooping head with its thorny crown, and on that familiar touch he let his hand fall, and with it fell asleep.

CHAPTER VII

GARNERED GRAIN

The next morning he was found lying as though worn out suddenly, never to move or speak again.  Only his brain was still alert as he lay there and watched them all from under his heavy lids.  Three days he lay, and they could not even tell how much he understood, for he was past the effort that communicating with them would have meant; but all the while he was feeling his brain was clearer than it had ever been in his life, that at last he knew many things he could have told them if he could have spoken, only they were things that cannot be taught by one man to another, for every man must find them for himself.