'Papa,' is rather quiet for the rest of the ride.

Ever since he was a lad--how many years ago is that ?--he has shot with his neighbour's party over this farm, and recollects the tenant well, and with that friendly feeling that grows up towards what we see year after year.

In a day or two the clergyman drives by with his low four-wheel and fat pony, notes the poster as the pony slackens at the descent to the water, and tells himself to remember and get the tithe.
Some few Sundays, and Farmer Smith will appear in church no more.
Farmer Smith this beautiful morning is looking at the wheat, which is, and is not, his.

It would have been cut in an ordinary season, but the rains have delayed the ripening.

He wonders how the crop ever came up at all through the mass of weeds that choked it, the spurrey that filled the spaces between the stalks below, the bindweed that climbed up them, the wild camomile flowering and flourishing at the edge, the tall thistles lifting their heads above it in bunches, and the great docks whose red seeds showed at a distance.