The Thornwick census lay open on the counting-house table, and the frost had got into its leather tabs overnight so that the pages would not lie flat. Casimir Vale weighted them with his own pair of brass candlesticks, one at each corner, and then sat back and looked at the thing he had built with his own hands for twenty years. It was not a census. It looked like a fence.
He had been calling the register for three days. He called it every quarter, the way his father had called the parish rolls before him, and the way he had called the city rolls after the fire, which was the only season of his life he had ever been ashamed of a number. He called it one name at a time, parlour by parlour. The clerk at the far end of the table answered for each household in a flat, clear voice, and Vale made a tick beside each name in his own hand. It was a method, and it had never failed him. Every family in Thornwick had a box, and every box had a family in it. When he reached the end of the rolls he could say with absolute certainty how many souls his lordship counted, and where each of them slept.
