Lowgate’s threshing floor had been running since the thaw, and by the end of the winter the lodgers had brought in more sheaves than anyone could remember. They came up from the marsh-fields in carts and on barrows and on their own backs, in bundles tied with straw, and they stacked them under the lean-to beside the granary until the thatch sagged and the children had to climb over the heaps to reach the threshing-boards. The air on the floor was thick with chaff and dust and the sweet, heavy smell of the grain, and the lodgers went about their work with the quiet, stubborn pride of people who had been fed by a book all their lives and were now feeding themselves.
Pell had come up the hill with the slate under her arm and her chalk behind her ear, because she did not trust a count she had not made herself.
The granary doors were wide open. Inside, the sacks were stacked in rows as high as a man’s head, each one tied at the neck and chalked on its side with the mark of the field it had come from. Pell had never seen the granary so full. She stood in the doorway with the slate on her hip and let her eyes run down the first row and then the second, and her mouth went thin.
