Six wagons sat in the gate approach with a rear wheel sunk to the hub in the ditch. Harrow counted them from the top of the approach, where the road came up out of the reeds and met the Hold’s old paving. Six wagons, six teams, one wheel in the ditch, and one caravan master walking up and down the line with his hat in his hand and his face the colour of the salt on his coat.
Harrow went down to meet him. He counted the stones of the approach as he went, because the paving had been laid by the Foundation’s own builders, and he knew their courses the way other men knew the faces of their neighbours. Counting was also the only way he knew to walk toward a stranger. Thirty-one stones from the gate to the ditch’s lip. He had counted the same stones in spring, and there had been thirty-one then, and he had been comforted by the number. The number was the one thing the approach had kept.
“You are the Mason,” the caravan master said. He was a lean man with a long jaw and a voice that had shouted at horses for a great many years. “They told me at the gate. You are the one who counts.”
