But though these years were barren of actual output, they were of value in many ways, and not the least as a period of incubation, for many a phrase or idea first formed in them was subsequently perfected and published. The intermission, too, left him freer to study and to labour among his parishioners. At the beginning and end of his life, poetry occupied a great deal of his time, for each of his sonnets, in spite of their apparent facility, was the result of much toil. He would work at the same lines morning after morning, and read the results aloud to his wife, or niece, or other companion after dinner, the same poem going through a great succession of forms. A letter to Miss Weld, in answer to some suggestion of a subject connected with the then recent excavations at Mycenae, shows his method of work and something of the manifold interests of his secluded life: "I never can undertake to work to order," he writes, "though the order comes from the dearest of customers. If I get a good hold of that poor, noble, nodding head I will put him on board of a respectable sonnet and try to save his memory from drowning.... Mycenae is a very exciting subject, but I have Kelsey Moor Chapel to write on--a commission from Mrs. Townsend ... and a poor dead dog haunts me" (see Sonnet 97--Collected Edition). During these barren years Charles Turner's devotion to his parochial work was intense. Grasby was a somewhat barbarous village when he obtained the living. Belief in witchcraft was still rife, and one of the popular charms against its influence was to cut a sheep in half, put the body on a scarlet cloth, and walk between the pieces. Such religion as there was among the poor was of a rather harsh spirit, as may be seen from an anecdote preserved by Miss Weld of an old cottager, who, hearing Mrs. Turner mention the name of Hobbes, exclaimed to his wife: "Why, loovey, that's the graate Hobbes that's in hell!" The climate, too, was as harsh as the character of the people, for the village stands high and bleak. Friends remember Louisa Turner going about her ministrations in clogs, and during one particularly sharp winter she writes: "I am in a castle now of double cotton wool petticoat and thick baize drawers and waistcoat." The Turners soon found it necessary to leave the house at Caistor, three miles off, where Sam Turner, Charles's uncle, the preceding vicar, had lived, for the distance made any real intimacy with the people impossible. Charles had inherited a small property from his uncle (the event was the occasion of his change of name), and this made it possible for him to build a new vicarage and to further enrich the village with new schools and a new church. He also took the very practical step of buying the village inn and putting it in charge of a reliable servant, a scheme which, for a time at least, had excellent effects on the temperance of the inhabitants.