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on, lass. Get yourself inside and if there's any way of making a hot drink, be it mead with the poker in it, or tea, or a small glass of beer or what have you, I'll be thankful for it, for like yourself I'm froze to the bone. And in the meanwhile, I'll get this stuff unloaded; then we can put it where you want it."
    She had blown up the small fire in the grate, then had put a part of water on and made some tea.
    An hour later, after the dealer had gone, she pushed the bolt in the door and sat crouched shivering near the fire, waiting for Nathaniel's return. And when he came she had flung herself into his arms and cried while she related her father's
    visit and his last words to her. And what Nathaniel said in reply was, "Well, it's what we expected and we've got to weather it..."
    The onslaught began a week later when the barn was set on fire. She could see herself even now springing up in bed to see the room glimmering in a rose glow and to hear the crackling sound of wood burning. They had rushed out and made straight for the well but had stopped when, with both hands on the bucket, Nathaniel had said, "It would take a river to put that out. A bucket is no use." But she had cried at him, "The sparks! They're catching here and there in the grass: if they spread, they'll get to the cottage."
    The rate at which they were able to bring up water from the well would have been of little use had it not been that the grass was still wet from rain earlier in the day.
    In the flickering light they saw shapes seeming to emerge from the shadows and a voice came through the night so high and loud that, for the moment, it shut out the crackling of the burning barn as it cried,
    "It'll be your house next, the whore house." And so, maddened, Nathaniel had been about to rush in the direction from which he thought the voice had come when voices from different areas began to hoot and yell.
    The following day Miss Netherton, after looking sadly on the burnt-out frame, said, "Well, I expected something like this. But it's got to be put a stop to in some way else your lives could be threatened." And Maria remembered thinking, They're already threatened.
    The following week they had brought home the first goat. She was a sweet creature, already in milk, and they thankfully drank their fill from her; at least for the next three days, before she was found with her front legs broken.
    She remembered holding the poor suffering animal in her arms and crying over it as if it were a child, her first child. Nathaniel had gone to Miss Netherton's to ask if Rob Stoddart, her coachman, or the lad, Peter Tollis, could come and shoot the animal and put it out of its misery, because he himself had never handled a gun. But from now on, he said, he would learn.
    The matter of the goat had incensed Miss Nether- ton and she had her coachman drive her into the village and to the Vicarage. And there she had told the Vicar that if he didn't stop incensing his parishioners against her tenants, as she had called them, he would in future be doing without her patronage. But, apparently, he had said that whatever she did, he would carry out God's will. So, following this, she had walked boldly into the bar of The Swan, an action in itself which caused comment, because no woman ever went into the main bar of a public inn. But there she had addressed not only Reg Morgan, the innkeeper, but also Robert Lennon, the blacksmith and his eldest son.
    Jack, as well as Willie Melton and his son. Dirk, who were painters and decorators, and she reminded them that of the thirty-two cottages and houses scattered around, she owned seventeen.
    Next she had gone to the King's Head and there again, in the main bar, she had addressed Morris
    Bergen and his wife. May, and John Fenton, the grocer, and two pit men from the nearby pit, Sam Taylor and Davy Fuller, who were known as louts and would do anything for an extra pint of ale. And addressing the latter two, she had pointedly reminded them