The boy came to the wall-gate in the rain, which was the first rain of the late summer and which had come in off the marsh at noon without warning, the way the Lamentine’s weather always came, all at once and sideways. Gaunt was on the bell-post. He had been on the bell-post since the morning, under the frame, with his hammer and a bucket of tallow and the first of the forty shares’ worth of iron laid out on a plank beside him, cutting and fitting and working the old rot out of the post’s joint one stroke at a time, and counting every stroke aloud, so that the Watch-woman on the wall could check them if she liked. She did not like. She had checked every one. He could hear her counting from the wall now, very faintly, over the hammer and the rain, and he resented every figure she gave.
He saw the boy at the gate-arch, a thin brown-faced lad of perhaps twelve in a sodden coat too big for him, with a leather pouch slung over one shoulder and his hands jammed into his armpits against the wet. The gate-watch had let him in on the strength of a Coldharbour seal on the pouch, which was a poor reason, and the boy was looking round the yard as though he expected the Hold to be made of gold and was disappointed to find it was only stone.
