The pace of honest accounting had the slow, grey patience of lime water dripping through cracked slate.
For forty-eight hours, the hill fort lived strictly under the Four Hall Limits. Each twilight, when the iron kettle was hauled off the fuel-less hearth and tallow stubs were set along the trestle boards, Noll ran the twin cedar boxes. He had pruned every unnecessary ornament from the rhythm. He did not wave velvet sleeves; he did not lean forward with the conspiratorial hush that had parted country boys from pennies in High Crag. He spoke plainly through the flue stones, laying out terms like a surveyor setting boundary stakes in a meadow.
“One box contains a buttered oat roll baked by Master Hobb at noon,” Noll announced to the long table. “The other box holds a clean chunk of quarry shale from the cellar pit. Both boxes are shut with brass slide-bolts. The choice belongs entirely to the hand that reaches out. If you lift the lid and find stone, you go without bread for supper, and the house earns nothing. If you choose on faith, believing bread will be there despite the stone, the ledger pays a crumb of fuel to keep the water troughs running, and the bread will taste faintly of stable straw.”
