She nodded her head slowly at the fire. A piece of the shattered decanter that had escaped her brush suddenly caught a gleam of light. It meant no more to her now than a flake of the stone-men’s flint of the kind that she and Ethel found on their picnics at Castel Ditches. ‘Of course Fellows must go,’ said Mr Prosser. ‘I reckon I can find another man by the end of the week.’ ‘Yes,’ Marion murmured. ‘At the end of the week.’ ‘Luckily there’s no scarcity of labour,’ said Mr Prosser happily. Marion’s thoughts turned idly to Wolfpits. She shut the idea of Wolfpits out of her mind. It was wrong, she thought, that Mary Malpas should ever have come again into her life. It was always wrong to uncover the past. They sat for a long time in silence. She crouched on the floor at her father’s side and his arm was thrown carelessly over her shoulder. His head nodded and he fell asleep, but Marion still stared into the embers, seeing nothing. It was nearly midnight when Mr Prosser woke with a start and rubbed his eyes. ‘I think I must have dropped off,’ he said. ‘Why, look at the clock!’ He kissed her good-night. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I saw young Fred Maddy over at Craven Arms. He talked about riding over for tea Sunday. He’s doing pretty well, is Fred Maddy, since his father died.’ He stood blinking at her curiously; but she made him no reply. ‘Will you put out the light in the kitchen, dad, and see to the doors?’ she said. Next morning, when he had listened to Abner’s own version of Daisy’s death and stood for a few moments in contemplation of the carcass, Mr Prosser told him without offering any explanation that he would not be wanted at The Dyke after the end of the week. Abner took it for granted that the loss of the cow explained his dismissal. It was a piece of bad luck, and no more was to be said for it. The blow was a heavy one, for he had felt that his position on the farm was secure and that the fortunes of Wolfpits were safe for the winter. He would have to begin his search for work all over again, and this at a time when the demand for labour was at its lowest. What made him particularly savage was the look of triumph that he now saw on Harris’s face. No doubt the ploughman had managed to put a word in against him with Mr Prosser. Well, a man who had taken such a hammering as Harris got on the night of the harvest home had a right to get his own back, particularly when fortune had given his enemy a trip.