The sheep, excepting a few old ewes, were always sold or killed before the winter, and by Blane's advice, Stead kept only three. The butcher Oates took some of the others, and helped Stead to dispose of four more in the market. Two were killed at different intervals for home use, but only a very small part was eaten fresh, as a wonderful Sunday treat, the rest was either disposed of among the neighbours, who took it in exchange for food of other kinds; or else was salted and dried for the winter's fare, laid up in bran in two great crocks which Stead had been forced to purchase, and which with planks from the half-burnt house laid over them served by turns as tables or seats. The fat was melted up in Patience's great kettle, and the rushes dipped in it over and over again till they had such a coating of grease as would enable them to be burnt in the old horn lantern which had fortunately been in the stable and escaped the fire. Kind neighbours helped Stead to cut and stack his hay, and his little field of barley. All the grass he could cut on the banks he also saved for the animals' winter food, and a few turnips, but these were rare and uncommon articles only used by the most advanced farmers, and his father had only lately begun to grow them, nor had potatoes become known except in the gardens of the curious. The vexation was that all the manor was called to give their three days' labour to Lady Elmwood's crops just as all their own were cut, and as, of course, Master Brown had chosen the finest weather, every one went in fear and trembling for their own, and Oates and others grumbled so bitterly at having to work without wage, that Blane asked if they called their own houses and land nothing. There was fresh grumbling too that the food sent out to the labourers in the field was not as it used to be, good beef and mutton, but only bread and very hard cheese, and bowls of hasty pudding, with thin, sour small beer to wash it down. Oates growled and vowed he would never come again to be so scurvily used; and perhaps no one guessed that my lady was far more impoverished than her tenants, and had a hard matter to supply even such fare as this. Happily the weather lasted good long enough to save the Kentons' little crop, though there was a sad remembrance of the old times, when the church bell gave the signal at sunrise for all the harvesters to come to church for the brief service, and then to start fair in their gleaning. The bell did still ring, but there were no prayers. The vicar had never come back, and it was reported that he had been sent to the plantations in America. There was no service on Sunday nearer than Bristol. It was the churchwardens' business to find a minister, and of these, poor Kenton was dead, and the other, Master Cliffe, was not likely to do anything that might put the parish to expense.