. .What he looked he felt. He was in the
agricultural world, but not of it. He served fire and smoke; these denizens
of the fields served vegetation, weather, frost, and sun. He travelled
with his engine from farm to farm, from county to county, for as yet the
steam threshing-machine was itinerant in this part of Wessex. He spoke
in a strange northern accent; his thoughts being turned inwards upon himself,
his eye on his iron charge, hardly perceiving the scenes around him and
caring for them not at all; holding only strictly necessary intercourse
with the natives, as if some ancient doom compelled him to wander here
against his will in the service of his Plutonic master. The long strap
which ran from the driving-wheel of his engine to the red thresher under
the rick was the sole tie-line between agriculture and him.
