ng holes in
the thatch above her sloping ceiling to their orifice at the eaves;
whereupon she also arose, and descended to the ground-floor again.

It was still dark, but she began moving about the house in those
automatic initiatory acts and touches which represent among housewives
the installation of another day. While thus engaged she heard the
rumbling of Mr. Melbury's wagons, and knew that there, too, the day's
toil had begun.

An armful of gads thrown on the still hot embers caused them to blaze
up cheerfully and bring her diminished head-gear into sudden prominence
as a shadow. At this a step approached the door.

"Are folk astir here yet?" inquired a voice she knew well.

"Yes, Mr. Winterborne," said Marty, throwing on a tilt bonnet, which
completely hid the recent ravages of the scissors. "Come in!"

The door was flung back, and there stepped in upon the mat a man not
particularly young for a lover, nor particularly mature for a person of
affairs. There was reserve in his glance, and restraint upon his
mouth. He carried a horn lantern which hung upon a swivel, and
wheeling as it dangled marked grotesque shapes upon the shadier part of
the walls.

He said that he had looked in on his way down, to tell her that they
did not expect her father to make up his contract if he was not well.
Mr. Melbury would give him another week, and they would go their
journey with a short load that day.

"They are done," said Marty, "and lying in the cart-house."

"Done!" he repeated. "Your father has not been too ill to work after
all, then?"

She made some evasive reply. "I'll show you where they be, if you are
going down," she added.

They went out and walked together, the pattern of the air-holes in the
top of the lantern being thrown upon the mist overhead, where they
appeared of giant size, as if reaching the tent-shaped sky. They had no
remarks to make to each other, and they uttered none. Hardly anything
could be more isolated or more self-contained than the lives of these
two walking here in the lonely antelucan hour, when gray shades,
material and mental, are so very gray. And yet, looked at in a certain
way, their lonely courses formed no detached design at all, but were
part of the pattern in the great web of human doings then weaving in
both hemispheres, from the White Sea to Cape Horn.

The shed was reached, and she pointed out the spars. Winterborne
regarded them silently, then looked at her.