A feeling of joy swept over him, a curious, almost physical exultation. He had brutally broken through the veil in which she hid herself. He had seen herself at last. Now, with the blood tingling in his fingers, he would assert himself triumphantly as the man by whose labour she lived. She could despise him no longer. He wanted to tell her so, to make himself strong before her, but when he looked at her and saw her humility, he could do nothing. His words withered on his lips. He scarcely knew what he was saying. ‘Give us a spot of tea, then,’ he said roughly, and she turned from him without another word. The Seventeenth Chapter SHE stayed at Wolfpits. The iron of winter lay heavy on the land. The hills were leagued with winter to hem them in and isolate them. It was as though Wolfpits were besieged. For many years there had been no such winter in the Powys march, and old men who divined portents of weather from the berries of holly and the conduct of birds, foretold that there was worse to come. By the end of January the cloggers, as sensitive to sky-change as any feathered migrants, had struck their tents in the Wolfpits valley, leaving half their harvest of alder ungathered, and set off north for Lancashire where, in a country parched with fire and warmed with millions of huddled houses, they might finish the shaping of their wood for market. In any case they had stayed in the country later than usual, and when old Mrs Malpas, shocked by Wigan Joe’s attempts to put life into her husband, bundled them out of their lodging at the Buffalo, they had no choice but to go, for the tenting that flapped miserably by the banks of the Folly Brook was no shelter for men in that bitter weather. ‘We’ll be back to hear the cuckoo, lad,’ said Wigan Joe. ‘You’ll none get rid of bad pennies like uz.’ And Abner, walking down the valley to work, heard no longer the echoing of their axes nor the crack of rending wood. Where the trim piles of billets had stood covered in tarpaulin he now saw nothing but squares of withered grass, and charred circles where they had made their fires among the birches by the river. Their departure made Wolfpits seem more distant and desolate than ever. Little by little the constriction of winter was crushing all life out of the valley. Only Wolfpits was alive, and it seemed a miracle that even Wolfpits should live.