Owen had a small rucksack on the ground, with his radio aerial protruding from the top. Nearby, his stones were laid out in the order he would need them, leaving a clear work area. The ground was already levelled and the foundation stones blocked together. Now the building stones had to be laid, and co-ordination of hand and eye would be needed to know exactly which stone to choose to plug a gap.

Silently, Mark continued to make progress, until he was standing only a few yards from the wall. For a while, he watched Owen’s hands as he worked. He was shaping the stones, carving them into new forms, until he had made them fit tightly together. When the wall was finished, it would be impossible to move a single stone by hand. Surely a man who could create with such care would never think of destroying anything?

Owen hefted another stone and swung the cutting edge of his hammer, slicing the gritstone into yellow shards that left a dusting of powder on his gloves.

‘Owen?’

The Ranger looked up, surprised. His hammer was poised in the air, its edge catching the light, a little bit of golden stone dust trickling down the shaft on to his red fleece. Mark was shocked by the look that he had caught on Owen’s face. He saw the Ranger start to compose his expression into an air of normality as he mentally rehearsed the lines he would use for a tourist. And then Owen saw who had startled him.

‘What are you doing here, Mark?’ he said. ‘You should be at home.’

‘So should you. It’s your day off.’

Owen shrugged. ‘There are things to do. This wall won’t wait. The boundaries have to be maintained, whatever else goes on. No one will do the job but me. Certainly not Warren Leach.’

The wall formed a boundary where the top fields of Ringham Edge Farm met the woods. Mark had already helped Owen to replace a stile which had collapsed with use over the years. Its original builders had used flat gritstone slabs instead of wooden steps, and the structure hadn’t done too badly – it had survived for the best part of two hundred years. But the weight of walkers’ boots had proved too much, loosening the slabs until they shifted out of balance and became dangerous.

Now Owen had worked up the hill to a stretch of wall that had fallen. Walkers had been crossing here, too – the ones too lazy to walk a few yards to the stile. It was a double wall, but the topping stones had been dislodged one by one, and the weather had got into the centre, washing through the filling until the sides bulged and slipped.