k the girl under her care,
accompanied her to Whitehaven, and directed her in the purchase of all
considered necessary for the wife of Ulfar Fenwick.

Then the deep snows shut in Seat-Ambar, and the great white hills
stood round about it like fortifications. But as often as it was
possible the Dalton postman fought his way up there, with his packet
of accumulated mail; for he knew that a warm welcome and a large
reward awaited him. In the main, the long same days went happily by.
William and Brune had a score of resources for the season; the
farm-servants worked in the barn; they were making and mending sacks
for the wheat, and caps for the sheeps' heads in fly-time, sharpening
scythes and tools, doing the indoor work of a great farm, and mostly
singing as they did it.

As Aspatria sat in her room, surrounded by fine cambric and linen and
that exquisite English thread-lace now gone out of fashion, she could
hear their laughter and their song, and she unconsciously set her
stitches to its march and melody. The days were not long to her. So
many dozens of garments to make with her own slight fingers! She had
not a moment to waste, but the necessity was one of the sweetest
delight. The solitude and secrecy of her labour added to its charm.
She never took her sewing into the parlour. And yet she might have
done so: William and Brune had a delicacy of affection for her which
would have made them blind to her occupation and densely stupid as to
its design.

So, although the days were mostly alike, they were not unhappily so;
and at intervals destiny sent her the surprises she loved. One morning
in the beginning of February, Aspatria felt that the postman ought to
come; her heart presaged him. The day was clear and warm,--so much so,
that the men working in the barn had all the windows open. They were
singing in rousing tones the famous North Country song to the
barley-mow, and drinking it through all its verses, out of the jolly
brown bowl, the nipperkin, the quarter-pint, the quart and the
pottle,--the gallon and the anker,--the hogshead and the pipe,--the
well, and the river, and the ocean,--and then rolling back the chorus,
from ocean to the jolly brown bowl. Suddenly, while a dozen men were
shouting in unison,--

"Here's a health to the barley mow!"

the verse was broken by the cry of "Here comes Ringham the postman!"
Then Aspatria ran to the window and saw him climbing the fell. She did
not like to go downstairs