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led into their bedroom.
    Within ten minutes of entering the room they were lying in bed, side by side, their hands joined as usual; and now he said to her, "Go to sleep. I can tell when you're thinking. There's been enough thinking for one night. Good-night, my love." He turned slightly on his side and kissed her, and again he said, "Go to sleep." And she answered,
    "Yes, I'm almost there."
    But she was far from sleep, for she knew that he had been thinking of the past, as she had been, and, her eyes wide now, she stared into the blackness and she was back to the day when she first saw this house.
    And she looked upon it now as a house and no longer a cottage, because it was twice the size it had been on that day.
    She could see the grass where it grew up to the window sills of the long, low, one-storeyed building, and when they had pushed the door open the smell of staleness and damp had assailed them.
    But she could hear Nat's voice, as he looked up to the roof, saying.
    That's firm enough. There's not a slate missing. And look at the size of the room;
    it must be fifteen feet long. And this other one. " He had hurried from her and through a door, then had shouted, This is the same length, almost." He had then climbed the ladder, and she had heard him stumbling along overhead, and he had called to her, "It's quite clear and there's piles of space."
    Down the ladder again, he had taken her hand and run her through the rooms to one of two doors at the far end. The first one led into a scullery-cum- kitchen, about seven feet square. Then they were out through the other door into the yard. And there, as if stuck onto the end of the house, were two byres, and beyond them a stable; and across a grass-strewn, stone-cobble yard was a coal house and a privy. But what was much more noticeable was the large barn. It was an old erection, and although the roof was gaping in many places the timbers were sound.
    She could hear him saying, "It's wonderful, wonderful." And she had thought so too, but she was speechless with the promise of joy to come.
    But what she did say to him when they returned to the house was,
    "Wouldn't it be wonderful if this could be one big room. Could you break the wall down?"
    "Why not, my love?" he had said.
    "Why not? We'll take the wall down and we'll make a fine kitchen of that scullery. And as for that fireplace-' he had pointed.
    "Out will come that small grate and we'll have an open fire, a big open fire."
    "But where will I cook?" she had said.
    "You'll have a fancy oven, my love," he had answered.
    "There's a showroom in a foundry in Gateshead Fell; I've seen it many times.
    We'll choose a stove with an oven and a hob and a flue leading upwards, connecting with this main chimney. Oh, we'll do wonders here, my love.
    " And they had kissed and he had waltzed her round the uneven floor.
    When at last they were outside again he said, "Miss Netherton tells me this used to be a splendid vegetable garden; and it'll be so again.
    And we'll have a cow. "
    "I'd rather have goats," was her immediate reaction.
    "Then we'll have goats, dear."
    How wonderful that day had been; but how they'd had to pay for it; how terrifyingly they'd had to pay for it.
    Three days later, her mother had left the farm, leaving a letter for her husband, a letter penned by Nathaniel; and the irony of it was that Mr. Dagshaw had rushed to the schoolmaster's house in a rage and asked him to read it. And it was with pleasure that Nathaniel had read his own writing:
    "I am leaving you and going back to my people. I have known nothing but cruelty from you all my married life. I've had our child; she too is leaving you. It is no use you coming after me and trying to force me back for my people will protect me. If you remember, they never liked you. It was by chance that we met, a sorry day for me, when I visited my late cousin in Gateshead Fell. But now it is over and you will have to pay for slaves in the
    future. I do not sign myself as your