With either type of quern Marion had found that the rough ungrindable husks and bran made excellent food for the hens, and if too much of this were left in the flour, the resulting bread was apt to upset the human bowel. Having ground it as fine as she could bear, it was simply a matter of sieving it through some coarse sacking and then giving the most gritty bits to the hens. Hens must be properly fed at this time of year for soon they would be laying and getting broody, and everyone knew that well-fed hens laid a lot more eggs, and fertile ones too, than did underfed scrawny hens with their thin drawn-out squawking.

So the corn was ground, the hens were fed, hay was pulled down from the shelf for the goat to eat, its water butt had to be filled up and a bit more straw put down for its bed. Marion patted the goat’s sides. She wanted to know if it were in kid or not. So far it showed no sign of it, yet before Christmas Marion had had a long slow walk leading the goat up the path through the fields to Rockwell and loosed her goat into the pen where the billy goat was kept. He had looked with a very disdainful expression at Marion before turning his attention on her goat. Marion had then gone into Nancy’s cottage at her invitation and had warmed her feet and had been given a rich drink made of honey. Rockwell honey was reputed to be the best, and this bubbly drink made from it was a Rockwell speciality. Marion found it most sustaining as she sat there talking with Nancy, and then found that she must have dozed off for Nancy was waking her and telling her that surely by this time the billy goat had done and she had better get home. So she had retied the rope round her goat’s neck and led her away, but she found the journey home very difficult as she kept wobbling about, and she did not know whether the billy goat had succeeded in getting her goat pregnant.

She had used the last of the rain water on the hens and the goat, and took the empty bucket down to the water-place. She saw that the great triangle of water below Martin’s cottage was much reduced and when she got down to the stream the platform below the willow stump was now just clear of the water level. The ground all about squelched at every step, and tufts of old grass, branches and leaves were left in a line on the bank, showing the water’s high mark. She filled her bucket with difficulty as the stream was now flowing very fast. The water was very muddy. She guessed that whatever had dammed the flow in the night had now been broken and the water was rushing away on its path to almost mythical Rutherford, and on and on into the greater unknown world.