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Matthew flung the sack off his back with such a vehement toss that the heavy cart bounced beneath it and it brought Rose's eyes round to him, and she stared hard at him for a moment before walking to the bench and putting down the can. Then going to her father who was making no laughing retort this morning to Straker's tale, she said, "How do you be now?" and he answered dully, "So-so. I think I want a good dose of physic."

As she left him and came across the mill floor again, she passed behind Matthew and said, "Your drink's waiting."

He did not answer her, not even to incline his head, but went on loading the dray, because when this was finished he'd be able to go.

It was the arrangement that he would work until half-past nine in the morning at the mill. This meant he had done a good three hours' labor before he returned to the shop and started on his own work. His three hours' labor was his means of buying a share in the mill. Miller Watson, for all his laughter and joviality, had a business head on his shoulders.

Matthew scraped the slush off his boots on a grating in the wall, then wiped them hard on a mat inside the door before entering the kitchen.

Rose was standing at the table buttering a large brown bannock. She did not look at him until after she had been to the hob and brought the teapot and poured out his mug of tea; then pushing the mug and the plate across the table to where he was sitting she said, "She sold her baim then?"

When he didn't reply, just stared at her, a hard, cold look in his eyes, she leant over the table towards him, her voice low but her words grating, and repeated, "I said, she sold her hairn then? Didn't you hear me? An' got a tidy sum for it, I understand." When still he didn't speak she went on, "Why look so thunderstruck if what you said was true. You said 'twasn't yours.... You don't know whose it was, do you, yours, his, or anybody else's ... ?"

She didn't finish, for the hot mug of tea went spinning across the table and the contents over one of her hands, and as she cried out and held her hand tightly under her oxter he stood gripping the edge of the table. His shoulders hunched, he cried with deep bitterness.

"I

tell you again it wasn't mine, but God! it I'd known what I know now it would have been. Do you hear? It-wouldhavebeeni" She was still holding her scalded hand under her armpit as she hissed at him, " I'll tell me father you're not doing your duty by me. I will, I will. "

"You do that. You do that." He made to go towards the door, when she now demanded, "Where you goin'?"

Turning slowly, he looked at her, saying.

"It's me time for going, isn't it? I've done me stint."

"You know what I mean, Matthew Tumbull. You know what I mean."

Yes he knew what she meant. He stared at her. She was his wife, and he knew what she meant. Her skin was blotched blue with anger. Aye, and frustration. That was his fault, he supposed, but, God above, he couldn't help it. He had tried; no man had tried more, but he just couldn't give her what she wanted;

as much as his own body cried out for satisfaction he just couldn't take it from hers. After that first week he had been sickened to the soul of him. If he had continued to take her it would have been as an animal did, and he was no animal. Even the sight of her face on the pillow beside him turned his stomach. But he wasn't crying out loud about anything, he had only himself to blame for the pickle he was in.

Aye, and his folks, and young William, and young Jimmy, and the other seven of them back there.

She said now, "If I was to tell me father he would cut you out, I know he would. There's no written agreement; he could do it an you'd be back in your little tin pot shop. And what's more, he'd make you support me; besides which he'd send William packin'. Aye, he would that."

He gave a mirthless, derisive laugh now as he said, "Well, if he did, that would be no hardship to her now, would it, for if she's sold her hairn and been well paid for it, she can afford to keep the lot of them. Funny, isn't it... ?" His bitterness now making him cruel, he poked his head forward and ended, "And to think it was because she couldn't afford to keep them that I married you."

He turned from her vicious yet deeply hurt look and went out; and, going into the open barn, he lifted his coat from the rack, put it on, donned his tall hat which he pulled down well over his brow, and mounted the cart and, crying briskly, "Gee-up there!" took the horse out of the yard at a trot. He hadn't spoken to the miller, which wasn't unusual;

but the miller hadn't spoken a word to him, and that was unusual.

He did not make for home but took the fell road. Twice he had to dismount and get behind the cart and, yelling at the horse to pull harder, help ease the wheels out of mud-filled pot holes. The farther he went on the fells the more grey and desolate the scene became.

There was a deadly body-chilling bleakness everywhere that matched the feeling inside him.

As he mounted the slope he saw Joe and Sarah carrying armsful of wood into the dwelling. In the noise of the wind they hadn't heard the cart draw up, nor had they observed him mounting the slope, so they closed the door after them.

He hesitated before knocking and it was Cissie herself who opened it, and he read on her expression surprise and what he could only translate as disappointment, and this latter emotion was borne home to him by the sudden drooping of her shoulders.

"Hello," he said.

She did not speak, but bowed her head and stood aside so that he could enter. Then the children were around him, all but Bella and Sarah; Sarah because she didn't like Matthew Turnbull as she once had done--she hadn't liked him since he had married the woman from the mill instead of their Cissie--and Bella because she was still in a state of shock and dread, and she couldn't as yet take in the fact that she wasn't going to the House of Correction.

As the children scampered about asking him questions about William and the mill, Cissie knelt before the fire and thrust potatoes into the hot ashes. Her heart was beating rapidly. This was the first time she had seen him since his marriage. He looked older, grey in the face, but that could be the bleakness of the weather. When the knock had come on the door she had thought it was the man and he had come to ask her to go back to the Hall because they couldn't get the child to stop crying.

All night she had prayed that it would cry and wail its loss of her, as she was crying and wa fling inside because of her empty arms, her empty life. She had six of them here to look after but without the child they no longer seemed her kin, her flesh. She prayed that this feeling would pass and she would love them again as she had done before she had gone through the Lodge gates and over that park; she prayed that she would not hate Bella, that she would be able to keep her hand off her when she did stupid things.

Although her heart was beating painfully there was no joy in her at seeing Matthew. He was standing to the side of her now; she could see his feet out of the corner of her eye and when he said, "Can you step outside a minute?" she sat back on her haunches, dusted the ashes from her hands and replied simply, "No."

There came a quietness on the room for a moment; then Sarah began to bustle, pushing at one and then another. Saying,

"Come on, you's," she shepherded them out of the room and into the cave, Annie protesting loudly the while, "No, our Sarahl I want near the fire."

Matthew, dropping on his hunkers and his voice low pitched, said, "I just heard; I'm sorry."

At this she put the palms of her hands together and nipped them between her knees and rocked her body gently backwards and forwards.

"What made you do it? If you were that hard up you should have told William to tell me on the quiet;

you know I would have come up with something. "

Her body still rocked.

"Cissie!" His arm flashed in front of her and gripped her shoulders and swung her round to him;

and now, his face close to hers, he whispered, "Don't hold it against me, girl. I had to do what I had to do. I told you, I warned you, an'

if it's any satisfaction to you I'm paying the price for it. Hell couldn't be worse. Look at me." His voice was a thin, hard whisper, and when she raised her eyes to his he saw they were glazed with tears and when slowly they spilled over her lids and down her cheeks he wagged his head from side to side and gritted his teeth. After a moment he swung off his hunkers and dropped on to his knees in front of her, and his hands slid down from her arms and brought her hands into his, and he asked gently, "Couldn't you get him back?" And when she shook her head, he said, "What straits were you in to let him go then?"

Her voice a low mutter, her head still bent, she said, "" Twas Bella; she stole. She was due to go before the justice on Monday. They would have sent her to the House of Correction. She . she was terrified out of her wits, an' . an' then him in the Hall.

He'd been after the child for weeks but I wouldn't let him go. Then then I was told that he could get Bella off, and would do, but only if I let him have the hairn. "

She looked at him now. His jaws were tight clenched, his brows meeting low over his nose, but he said nothing, and she turned towards the fire again and, reaching out, turned one of the potatoes, and when she sat back on her haunches she said on a deep sigh, "If he hadn't of got him that way he would have some other. He was going to take it to Court to daim him." She lifted up her eyes to his again and, not knowing that her words were like knives being thrown at him, she said, "I loved him so, an' I miss him. I don't feel I'd just had him five months. It's funny, but it's as if I'd had him all my life. And now there's nothing more to live for."

His head was down and his cheekbones were showing white through his weatherbeaten skin. He had never seen the child and he'd had no wish to, and in the deep socket of his heart he knew he was glad she had lost it. Yet her loss created an agony inside himself. He wanted to comfort her, just hold her, stroke her hair, say her name, gently over and over again as he did in the night, "Cissiel Cissiel Cissiel" He bent dose towards her again, saying, "I'll call in from time to time.

It may be late on when I manage it, but. but I'll manage it somehow.

"

Her reaction to his proposal startled him, for she jumped to her feet and reaching out to the mantel piece she turned a little wooden box upside down onto her palm, then thrust out her hand holding the five sovereigns saying, "We'll not be stayin' here all that long, we'll be getting' a house out of it. Look; I have that every month. As long as he has the child

I've got that. It's a fortune . isn't it? A fortune. " There was bitterness in her voice; there was accusation in her eyes.

They stared at each other for a time. Then he rose, turned slowly from her and went out.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon when William came panting into the wheel shop and, holding his side, gasped at Matthew, "She says ...

Missis says you've got to come, the master's bad," and immediately Matthew mounted the cart and, having pulled William up beside him, rode pell-mell back to the mill.

The light was fading as he entered the yard and Straker was standing under the platform of the threshing floor, but he didn't move towards them to take the horse, nor did he speak; and Matthew ran across the yards and entered the kitchen.

The lamp was lit and in its light he saw Jess Watson lying full length on the wooden saddle set at right angles to the fireplace, and by his side in the leather chair sat Rose. When she turned her face towards him, it looked twisted as if she were crying, but her eyes were dry and as he slowly approached her she said, "He's dead. He ... he came in, he said he had a pain, he ... he couldn't bear it, it was in his chest, and then ... and then he lay down and ... and he just died."

In this moment Matthew was as shocked as she was. He stood looking down on the miller, his hair and face still covered with flour, his mouth open, his eyes staring upwards. He thought, he cannot be gone, he was all right this morning. Then thinking back he remembered him complaining about his stomach. But he could not believe the evidence of the staring eyes and the gaping mouth and he laid his ear against the floured chest, but there was no movement. Then he stood up and looked at Rose, and she at him, and,

putting out his hand and raising her to her feet, he said gently, "Come away. I'll get the doctor."

At this, she said low in her throat, "It's too late for that," and he replied, "In cases like this, you've got to have him. Come into the parlor an' sit down, I'll see to things,"

Five days later they buried the miller. It was a well attended funeral, for he was widely known and respected; and after the mourners had eaten and drunk their fill in the parlor, they lingered on, curious to know what the miller had left to his daughter. But the lawyer did not read the will until they had all left, and there was only the miller's daughter and her husband present, for the miller had been an only child as the miller's daughter was an only child.

The will had been drawn up six years previously and the miller left everything he possessed to his daughter. The mill and two acres of land, which was freehold, seven terraced houses in Shields, a row of cottages in Jarrow and, what even came as a surprise to Rose, three houses in Newcastle, which were situated in Mosley Street where the Theatre Royal and the post office were. The houses were each of four stories;

one was leased to a bank. These three houses, the lawyer pointed out, were of substantial value and were in fact equal to all the rest of the property put together, including the mill. He congratulated Mrs.

Tumbull in being placed in very favorable circumstances.

The lawyer gone, the house quiet, Matthew took a lantern and walked round the mill. He went up on to the threshing floor and held the lantern high. He walked round the grain store, the weighing room, the stables, then he crossed the yard and walked along the icy road to the full extent of the land. Still on the road, he skirted the house and, again swinging the lantern high, he looked up and down its face which held eight good windows; then he went in through a side door and along a passage and into the little room that Jess Watson had used to hold his bills and receipts, together with the strong iron-bound box that he took into Newcastle once a quarter and emptied the contents into a bank. He held the lantern up to show the small sloping-lidded desk, the leather chair, the empty fireplace, and above it on the wall the long pipe rack holding up to fifteen clay pipes. Finally, his eyes rested on the blank wall facing him. It was made for book shelves.