Next morning his work at the Pentre began. As Mr Williams had said, it was a boy’s work by rights and unfitted to a man of Abner’s strength. At first sight it seemed like one of those labours which malignant kings impose upon their daughters’ suitors in fairy tales. The Pentre was a large farm of miserable land. Its uppermost cultivated fields reached nearly to the crown of the smooth hills at the valley head, ending abruptly at the foot of stony screes. From these unstable precipices the winter torrents rolled down many stones, flat rocky fragments that impeded the plough. Nor were these all, for the soil was so thin, that every ploughing turned up thousands more, and in winter the fields were overspread with a pale bloom of stones. At this season of the year the uplands were always cold, enwrapped in icy vapours or glistening with frost that glued each fragment to the ground. Abner’s task was to clear these stubborn acres of their surface stones: an endless labour, for no sooner had he picked the surface over than new stones appeared. No convict labour could have been more monotonous, more thankless, nor, as it seemed, more futile. From dawn to sunset he worked in loneliness. No single human figure approached him all day long except that of Mr Williams, whom he would see coming like a speck in the lower distance urging his pony upwards. When he reached Abner the farmer would stay scowling at him for a few minutes. He was a surly man, and rarely spoke except on Monday evenings after Ludlow market. Then, having satisfied himself that Abner was not shirking, he would turn away and walk his pony down the hill again. There was never any fear that Abner would not work. It was only by violent exertion that he could keep any heat in his body, for his food was poor, and the winter, as old Drew had prophesied, severe. He toiled there in rain, in sleet, in snow, and in blinding mist. The pay was so poor that he knew he could not afford to miss a day, picking up stones with numbed and ragged fingers when no other labourers were afield. Every evening he walked home dead tired, scarcely knowing if his legs were his own, for the continual stooping took all sensation away from them.