the strength and beauty of the pig, and falls into deep thought.  Then the buyer says, as though moved by a great desire, that he is ready to give so much for the pig, naming half the proper price, or a little less.  Then the seller remains in silence for some moments; and at last begins to shake his head slowly, till he says:  “I don’t be thinking of selling the pig, anyways.”  He will also add that a party only Wednesday offered him so much for the pig—­and he names about double the proper price.  Thus all ritual is duly accomplished; and the solemn act is entered upon with reverence and in a spirit of truth.  For when the buyer uses this phrase:  “I’ll tell you what I will do,” and offers within half a crown of the pig’s value, the seller replies that he can refuse him nothing, and names half a crown above its value; the difference is split, the pig is sold, and in the quiet soul of each runs the peace of something accomplished.

Thus do we buy a pig or land or labour or malt or lime, always with elaboration and set forms; and many a London man has paid double and more for his violence and his greedy haste and very unchivalrous higgling.  As happened with the land at Underwaltham, which the mortgagees had begged and implored the estate to take at twelve hundred, and had privately offered to all the world at a thousand, but which a sharp direct man, of the kind that makes great fortunes, a man in a motor-car, a man in a fur coat, a man of few words, bought for two thousand three hundred before my very eyes, protesting that they might take his offer or leave it; and all because he did not begin by praising the land.

Well then, this man I spoke of offered to help me, and he went to get his scythe.  But I went into the house and brought out a gallon jar of small ale for him and for me; for the sun was now very warm, and small ale goes well with mowing.  When we had drunk some of this ale in mugs called “I see you,” we took each a swathe, he a little behind me because he was the better mower; and so for many hours we swung, one before the other, mowing and mowing at the tall grass of the field.  And the sun rose to noon and we were still at our mowing; and we ate food, but only for a little while, and we took again to our mowing.  And at last there was nothing left but a small square of grass, standing like a square of linesmen who keep their formation, tall and unbroken, with all the dead lying around them when the battle is over and done.

Then for some little time I rested after all those hours; and the man and I talked together, and a long way off we heard in another field the musical sharpening of a scythe.

The sunlight slanted powdered and mellow over the breadth of the valley; for day was nearing its end.  I went to fetch rakes from the steading; and when I had come back the last of the grass had fallen, and all the field lay flat and smooth, with the very green short grass in lanes between the dead and yellow swathes.