Of the three farms, Wastralls was the largest and most important. Across the valley were wide commons—the wastralls—once bare, blown sand, but now converted by spire grass into turf for the fattening of red-brown bullocks. On the heavy land between the house and the little stream were orchards and cornfields, while behind the cliffs, tethered in pairs to prevent them being blown over the edge, a flock of sheep nibbled the short grass. The manor itself was a low two-storied oblong of country stone and, with its courts and outhouses, seemed as much an excrescence of the rocky ground as more solid outcroppings. A grey irregularity by day, it sank, when twilight fell, into its surroundings. At dawn St. Cadic Mill was a black tower against the saffron; at dusk Hember windows flamed with reflections of the west; but both at dawn and dusk Wastralls was more a presumption than a fact. The house was older than Hember, older than the mill, and its obscurity suggested that the forgotten builder had hoped the Storm-god might take Wastralls in his stride, that Death might fail, among so many grey swells and hummocks, to distinguish it. The place had been built to house two families. A dividing wall cut the fine chambers on the western front from the low-pitched rooms that looked across the yard. A green door, stout and with a heavy lock, was set in the dividing wall to allow of communication between the old-time lord of the manor and the bailiff who tilled his fields; but the families, living back to back, having different modes of egress and ingress, the one taking the field path, the other the road, preserved each its privacy. When Old Squire brought a wife to Wastralls, she, preferring the homeliness of the farmstead, had made it their dwelling-place. From thenceforward the life of the house centred in the roomy, whitewashed kitchen; and the fine chambers, swept and shuttered, were only used on ceremonial occasions. Old Squire had no use for state or trappings and when his son Freathy reigned in his stead, the lesser man asked no greater luxury than had satisfied his sire. This second Freathy married a woman so indistinct that it was a wonder he had seen her sufficiently well to fall in love. She ruled Wastralls with a boneless hand, and used her knees for praying rather than scrubbing. Of this vague, colourless creature was born the vital bright-haired Sabina. Her father welcomed her as a beginning, "first a maid and then a child," but his wife’s effort left her exhausted. The tonic air of the valley made it difficult for her to die, but she failed a little, month by month, until, unnoticed, she was able to slip into her grave. Freathy’s thought was "must marry again, try to get a boy; ’twon’t do to let a maid be heir of the land." But he was comfortable as a widower, more comfortable than he had been during Dusha’s pious, slatternly existence and, Time, the inexorable, drew the daisy quilt about his neck, while he yet procrastinated.