oircumstances, that to try and set the whole picture in a frame is quite beyond me, so as far as the year's round is concerned I leave it. off and on There are, however, jobs which arise in special sequence, but throughout the year. Jobs not dependent on weather or seasons, but essentially part of farm life, not in the fields, but bringing us into touch with the outside world. Of these are threshing days, days at the blacksmith's shop, and day's fetching and carrying from the station of the little town about two miles away, and they are best in a chapter by themselves. "We're off to thresh a Wednesday!" Dan suddenly states at tea. "What?" we ask. Barley," says Dan. We do not make conversation on the land much-just state facts. Tuesday night Bees the engine rolling up into the yard in time to get "set to t' stack" fit for morning. We are out in good time, and feed our horses and bed them well up for a happy day off; and also out in good time to get hold of a handy fork before any one else nabs it. Look after your self on a farm and you'll get on all the better all round, and a "handy" fork will save you a lot of weariness, and make it easier to keep your end up until night. Every one has their job on a threshing day; most of them fall to you according to the position you naturally hold on the farm, A day-labourer carries straw, or if one of the senior men, perhaps forks from the stack; a waggoner carries corn, and a young lad has to face the worst and dustiest job of all, that of carrying the chaff away. I know that job to my oost, and I haven't a good word left for it. Boots and I, though waggoners, were of course not able to carry corn, which in the case of wheat is eighteen stone to a sack. (I think, incidentally, this is almost the only job on only job on a farm that is physically absolutely beyond women, though they may have to go slow at others.) We usually worked one on the straw stack and one on the corn stack. Threshing is perhaps the greatest "team" work there is. Everybody's speed is dependent on some one else's, and if there is overbalance of "force" in one department the rest are overdone. Put too many on to the corn stack in proportion to the rest and they cannot keep pace-the straw comes through too fast, and the lad struggling with the chaff finds himself completely "bunged up with a heap of dust and barley horns. Little grimy-faced lads, struggling away with their loads on their backs, only to come back to find the heap higher than ever, and pouring through with relentless fury -no wonder sometimes they begin to "rake it by" or stand helplessly watching it come, till the foreman catches them, and "tells them off," or seeing it is hopeless sends some one to the rescue. My normal work of forking from the stack has its ups and downs, literally so in fact, according to the height of the stack. It's as good a job as any when you are fresh and the stack is high above the machine, but as it grows towards night and you sink down and down, it's not so easy to put the sheaves up; and with half a gale of wind blowing back from the machine—well, I know now what a man means when he says, "By lad, but it didn't half blow threshing yon barley yesterday. I was fair blind by night.' At the end of a long weary day in the wind and dust, after the "boom-whoom" of the engine has ceased, and you begin to try and wash the dust from your eyes and face, & man who has perhaps been stacking straw in the barn out of sight all day will come up with a laugh and ask, "What's it been like on t' stack to-day?" I think my answer would be, "It's all right now it's night," and he would not waste his pity on me. As likely as not he'd tell me cheerily he'd been having a pleasant job in the barn, but I should know what he meant -just the fellowship of work, -next time might find him on the stack in the wind and me in the barn, and it would be my turn to ask "What cheer?" One of the pleasant little jaunts that come one's way as horseman on a farm is a morning at the blacksmith's shop. 8 I Sometimes on a dark winter's morning I have stumbled into the stable with my lantern, and as I shut the door heard what, I won't deny, was welcome little click from Sam's or Joek's stall, which told me in an instant some one had a shoe loose. I hung up my lantern and investigated, and found perhaps Sam with a loose and worn fore-shoe. begin to wonder what I am likely to be doing that day, and if it is so urgent a job that Sam will have to "carry on" for a "for a day or so as he is. Then Dan Then Dan comes along to milk, and I just mention as he passes that "Sam seems to have a loose shoe," to which Dan usually muttered an unintelligible reply, after which Boots and Jack and I adjourn to breakfast, and between mouthfuls of bacon, pastry, and tea speculate as to my chances of being sent to the town with Sam. As we come out from breakfast Dan meets us and says to Boots and Jack, "You can go to plough," and adds to me, "Tak' Sam to t' blacksmith's shop and get him shod all round." Good for us, Sam! We've got our morning's spree, and it's on with your bridle and off we go, riding into the town together. Perhaps another horse is in before us, but we wait our turn, not at all impatient, and discuss farming prospects with all who come into the forge, and Sam comes in for his share of praise again, as "a right horse to shoe." Then back brasses for our horses. In again to the farm, where, as one fresh from the outer world, I am subjected to a vigorous cross-examination on all I have seen and done. Again, perhaps in the middle of a long spell of ploughing, we would sit down to tea, and Dan would suddenly say, "There's ten ton o' coals at the station for us! You'll have to go for it with t' rulley and two carts in t' mornin'." Then we begin to get a move on. It simply is not done at our farm, to drive into the town without shining harness and brasses-hames like silver, and boots and leggings clean. That means that after tea we go out into the stable again and start cleaning and polishing, and fastening brass facepieces on to our "blinders," and martingales, covered with brasses and bells, on to the collars. I wonder how many people realise that the brasses they see shining on the heads and chests of the horses in a farm waggon or town dray are not the property of the owner of the horses, but of the man who drives them? and to a great extent you can judge a "waggoner's" pride in pride in his horses by the number and condition of his brasses. Boots and I used to like to go into the town as resplendent as possible, and we gradually collected a magnificent set of fact, Boots had a martingale which was the admiration of the town, and many a time have I been asked for a facepiece like my little Sam's. He used to look splendid with his black coat shining—a martingale with four brasses down his chest, a regimental coat-ofarms on his forehead, on top of his head a little horse "rampant" swinging in in a brass ring-his tail tied up with ribbons, brown and orange and green, and knotted halter swinging jauntily to his knee. Jock had another set of brasses for himself, and Boots again for her horses. us On all these special occasions, such as fetching coal or coke from the station, or delivering corn after threshing, it would be a very unusual circumstance which saw without them. Though I must admit that once, on a very wet muddy day, Sam eluded me at the stable door and skipped off into a plough field, and rolled, and rolled, and rolled. I need not describe the result, and Sam would be furious if he knew I'd told, because he was rather ashamed afterwards. Generally the railwaymen used to come and say, "Your horses do look well!' but that day they didn't, and I think Sam felt he was a little to blame about it. (To be concluded.) CINEMA OF WAR. EVERY platform of the railway station at Amiens was crowded with a noisy throng of soldiers and civilians. British and Colonial soldiers, waiting for the leave- train, composed about a third of the great concourse, and the rest consisted of repatriated French people on their way north in batches to reinhabit, now that victory had been won, the less devastated districts. The civilians looked tired and pinched, but they were happy. Were they not proceeding to their homes? Had they not been assured that those homes (fortunate in comparison with the homes of so many others) still stood? Yes, they were going back to their own beloved patch of France, and that was enough for them. A French officer to whom I had once expressed astonishment at the way in which the peasantry clung to their villages under constant shell fire, had answered very simply, "Ils aiment beaucoup la terre." Amiens itself has not suffered much visible damage from bombardment, and the Cathedral is practically unharmed. But the quarter down by the railway station has been a good deal knocked about, and the station roof has not one pane of glass remaining. Shell scars and heaps of débris are everywhere. You think as you look around you what a narrow escape the great city and traffic- centre had, what Here now was I, in early December, back in that same Amiens station, and the world was at peace our peace. Since that March day, what a lot of things had happened! In the mighty thrust and resistance which had followed, the battle front had been pinned almost within storming distance of the city, and the line from Amiens to Paris had had to be closed. When, in the middle of last July, I passed from Arras, where all were standing waiting for a fresh enemy blow, to Champagne, where a mighty blow had just been mightily met, I had to travel to Paris vid Abbeville and Beauvais. Then I had seen the transition of the French from the defensive to the offensive (al most, one might say, from graveyard-the prayers, the grave to gay). I had seen fears, the resolutions, the bethe help given to them by reavements. The road over some of our best Divisions. I which we now went so smoothly had seen the Rheims and had been repaired, but the Soissons sectors begin to press "country" on either side was forward upon the surprised still bereft of all semblance of and bewildered Boche-French, life, ohurned into a thing abomBritish, Italians, with the inable. All that had been light of victory in their eyes. added to it since the fighting The wonderful good fortune were many thousands of little was then mine of being trans- wooden crosses, and the dead ferred once more to the Arras had been tenderly bestowed front (but still keeping clear beneath their care. Names, of the Amiens railway station) too, had been painted on boards just as the British offensive, all along the road, on the sites which was to win the war, of little villages which, though was about to open. they have disappeared in fact, are mighty now in memoryWarlen court, Courcelette, Martinpuich, Thiepval, Pozières, Contalmaison. On the grim "Slag Heap" three orosses stand against the sky, as on the Mount of Olives of a nightmare. It is all very splendid, and not a little tremulous, to look back upon now; but what periods there were in that long four years' struggle before we had triumphed, when it really had seemed as if the Beast might after all have his way! Or, perhaps, if one never quite felt that, the thought may have come that personally one could never expect to see our triumph. But now the Armistice was a fact, had been so for a month, and I was waiting upon the Amiens platform to go on leave to Paris. I had just motored down through the devastated area, back once more across the Hindenburg Line and the Drecourt-Queant Switoh, through which we had so irresistibly broken. Every stage in that journey, done so swiftly and so easily now, had been gained at no one will ever know what oost, or by what dauntless heroism. One picked up all ones. unvoiced thoughts while passing back over that dismal The train for Paris was very late, and a couple of local trains, although they had proceeded on their way crammed with repatriés whom they had picked up at the station, had not produced any visible diminution in the numbers which thronged the platforms. Then, while we continued to wait, an empty goods train came backing in rather aimlessly and halted opposite to where I stood. The waggon immediately in front of me was a covered truck, full of German prisoners. There were iron bars across the openings, and from behind these a score of brutish faces stared out at the free people upon the platform. There were no taunting or jeers from these, no threats |