'Two or three generations ago, 'twas a wheat-field,' Jack said, using the sword to harvest a sheaf of overripe stalks growing wild in a sunny break on the bank of the stream. He sheathed the sword and smelled the grain. 'The good peasants would come here during the harvest with their dulled whistles slung over their tired shoulders.' Before Jack had waded in he had kicked off his boots. He waded around the swirling pool, groping at the bottom with his bare toes, and after a minute bent down, reached in, and brought up a long curved scythe-blade, notched from striking rocks – just a solid crescent of rust now, a few fingers of slimy black wood projecting from the handle-socket. 'They would whet their whistles using rocks that had been worn smooth by the river.' He brought up one such rock in his other hand and scrubbed it against the blade for a moment, then tossed it up on the bank. 'And while they were doing so they might not be above taking a bit of refreshment.' Still probing with his feet, he bent down again and produced an earthenware drinking-jug, turned it over, and poured out a green-brown tube of stagnated water. The jug he tossed also onto the bank. Still holding the long rusty arc of the whistle in one hand, he turned round and waded back in search of an exhibit he had detected earlier. He found it again, and nearly fell over, the stream's current dividing round his thigh as he stood flamingo-style and passed the other foot over something down there. 'And so went their simple, happy lives – until something intervened – ' Jack now swung the whistle-blade slowly and (he liked to suppose) dramatically across the surface of the pool, a pantomime Grim Reaper.