Harrow loaded the Lowgate timber himself, because nobody else in the Hold could be trusted to stack a beam so that it would still be a beam by the time it reached the ridge.
The yard at the foot of the wall was full of it, and every beam had a name on it, and Harrow read them as he lifted them. He read quietly, because he had not been asked to read anything in the Hold but the count, and a Mason who reads names aloud in a yard is a Mason who has been asked to do something he will regret. But the lodgers had asked him, in the Hold’s own fashion, which was to chalk the names where he would have to see them. So he read. Oda, said one beam, in careful capitals with a row of small stars under it. Berne and Ilse, said the next, one name above the other, in two hands that had plainly fought over the chalk. Tam Lowe, who is nine. Sefton. Ansa’s Mother, who would not give her name. By the fourth cart the carters had begun to repeat them under their breath, so that the yard sounded, for a moment, like the roll-call at the candle-clock.
