and his broad-shouldered aspect something of the bull-dog expression—­“Don’t you meddle with me, and I won’t meddle with you.”  But he was honest even to the splitting of an oat-grain rather than he would take beyond his acknowledged share, and as “close-fisted” with his master’s property as if it had been his own—­throwing very small handfuls of damaged barley to the chickens, because a large handful affected his imagination painfully with a sense of profusion.  Good-tempered Tim, the waggoner, who loved his horses, had his grudge against Alick in the matter of corn.  They rarely spoke to each other, and never looked at each other, even over their dish of cold potatoes; but then, as this was their usual mode of behaviour towards all mankind, it would be an unsafe conclusion that they had more than transient fits of unfriendliness.  The bucolic character at Hayslope, you perceive, was not of that entirely genial, merry, broad-grinning sort, apparently observed in most districts visited by artists.  The mild radiance of a smile was a rare sight on a field-labourer’s face, and there was seldom any gradation between bovine gravity and a laugh.  Nor was every labourer so honest as our friend Alick.  At this very table, among Mr. Poyser’s men, there is that big Ben Tholoway, a very powerful thresher, but detected more than once in carrying away his master’s corn in his pockets—­an action which, as Ben was not a philosopher, could hardly be ascribed to absence of mind.  However, his master had forgiven him, and continued to employ him, for the Tholoways had lived on the Common time out of mind, and had always worked for the Poysers.  And on the whole, I daresay, society was not much the worse because Ben had not six months of it at the treadmill, for his views of depredation were narrow, and the House of Correction might have enlarged them.  As it was, Ben ate his roast beef to-night with a serene sense of having stolen nothing more than a few peas and beans as seed for his garden since the last harvest supper, and felt warranted in thinking that Alick’s suspicious eye, for ever upon him, was an injury to his innocence.

But now the roast beef was finished and the cloth was drawn, leaving a fair large deal table for the bright drinking-cans, and the foaming brown jugs, and the bright brass candlesticks, pleasant to behold.  Now, the great ceremony of the evening was to begin—­the harvest-song, in which every man must join.  He might be in tune, if he liked to be singular, but he must not sit with closed lips.  The movement was obliged to be in triple time; the rest was ad libitum.