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With their superior knowledge it was natural that they should assume the leadership.

Boxer and Clover would harness themselves to the cutter or the horse-rake (no bits or reins were needed in these days, of course) and tramp steadily round and round the field with a pig walking behind and calling out "Gee up, comrade!" or "Whoa back, comrade!" as the case might be.

And every animal down to the humblest worked at turning the hay and gathering it.

Even the ducks and hens toiled to and fro all day in the sun, carrying tiny wisps of hay in their beaks.

In the end they finished the harvest in two days' less time than it had usually taken Jones and his men.

Moreover, it was the biggest harvest that the farm had ever seen.

There was no wastage whatever; the hens and ducks with their sharp eyes had gathered up the very last stalk.

And not an animal on the farm had stolen so much as a mouthful.

All through that summer the work of the farm went like clockwork.

The animals were happy as they had never conceived it possible to be.

Every mouthful of food was an acute positive pleasure, now that it was truly their own food, produced by themselves and for themselves, not doled out to them by a grudging master.

With the worthless parasitical human beings gone, there was more for everyone to eat.

There was more leisure too, inexperienced though the animals were.

They met with many difficulties - for instance, later in the year, when they harvested the corn, they had to tread it out in the ancient style and blow away the chaff with their breath, since the farm possessed no threshing machine - but the pigs with their cleverness and Boxer with his tremendous muscles always pulled them through.

Boxer was the admiration of everybody.

He had been a hard worker even in Jones's time, but now he seemed more like three horses than one; there were days when the entire work of the farm seemed to rest on his mighty shoulders.

From morning to night he was pushing and pulling, always at the spot where the work was hardest.

He had made an arrangement with one of the cockerels to call him in the mornings half an hour earlier than anyone else, and would put in some volunteer labour at whatever seemed to be most needed, before the regular day's work began.

His answer to every problem, every setback, was "I will work harder!"- which he had adopted as his personal motto.

But everyone worked according to his capacity.

The hens and ducks, for instance, saved five bushels of corn at the harvest by gathering up the stray grains.

Nobody stole, nobody grumbled over his rations, the quarrelling and biting and jealousy which had been normal features of life in the old days had almost disappeared.

Nobody shirked - or almost nobody.

Mollie, it was true, was not good at getting up in the mornings, and had a way of leaving work early on the ground that there was a stone in her hoof.

And the behaviour of the cat was somewhat peculiar.

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