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"You'll have a fancy oven, my love," he had answered.

"There's a showroom in a foundry in Gateshead Fell; I've seen it many times.

We'll choose a stove with an oven and a hob and a flue leading upwards, connecting with this main chimney. Oh, we'll do wonders here, my love.

" And they had kissed and he had waltzed her round the uneven floor.

When at last they were outside again he said, "Miss Netherton tells me this used to be a splendid vegetable garden; and it'll be so again.

And we'll have a cow. "

"I'd rather have goats," was her immediate reaction.

"Then we'll have goats, dear."

How wonderful that day had been; but how they'd had to pay for it; how terrifyingly they'd had to pay for it.

Three days later, her mother had left the farm, leaving a letter for her husband, a letter penned by Nathaniel; and the irony of it was that Mr. Dagshaw had rushed to the schoolmaster's house in a rage and asked him to read it. And it was with pleasure that Nathaniel had read his own writing:

"I am leaving you and going back to my people. I have known nothing but cruelty from you all my married life. I've had our child; she too is leaving you. It is no use you coming after me and trying to force me back for my people will protect me. If you remember, they never liked you. It was by chance that we met, a sorry day for me, when I visited my late cousin in Gateshead Fell. But now it is over and you will have to pay for slaves in the

future. I do not sign myself as your wife because I have been nothing but a servant to you. I sign myself Mary Clark, as I once was. "

Nathaniel had said that the man had looked thunderstruck for a moment, and then had said, "D'you want payin' for readin' that?" And Nathaniel had answered, "I do not charge for reading letters, and that one has given me the greatest pleasure to convey." Her father, she understood, had screwed up his face and peered at Nathaniel as if he were puzzled by the answer. And it was a full two weeks before the puzzle was solved for him, and then only when he went into the market, where some toady commiserated with him about his daughter disgracing herself and going to live with the schoolmaster in Heap Hollow Cottage. And didn't he know the village was up in arms and the schoolmaster had been dismissed and the vicar had practically put a curse on them both?

Perhaps it was fortunate that the day her father confronted her, in such a rage as to bring his spittle running down his chin and his hands clawing the air as he screamed at her, was the day the secondhand dealer from Fellburn had brought his flat cart full of oddments of furniture, including a bedstead, a chest of drawers, a wooden table, two chairs, and a large clip pie mat, besides kitchen utensils, and when he saw the red-faced farmer raise his hand to the nice young lass who had sat up on the front of the cart with him and had chatted all the way from the town, he had thrust himself between them, saying,

"Look! mister. If you don't want to find yourself on your back, keep your hands down, and your voice an' all. " And her father had yelled at him, " She's my daughter and she's turned into a whore," to which the man retorted, " Well, if that's the case you won't want anything to do with her, will you? So be off! for I'll be stayin' till her man gets back from Fellburn where, she tells me, he's on business. "

At this her father had yelled, "He's not her man, he's a schoolmaster who's been thrown out of his job. He's a waster, a married man."

"Well, if that's the case, to my mind he's a nice waster, from what I saw of him yesterday. So will I have to tell you just once more to get goin'!"

At this her father had thrust his head out towards her as he growled,

"I'll see you crawling in the gutter. D'you hear? And I'll have the village about your ears. They won't put up with the likes of you; they'll stone you out. And you're no longer akin to me, nor is the one that bore you. Not a penny of mine will ever come your way. And you'll rot, d'you hear? You'll rot inside. You filthy hussy, you!

"

And at this she had cried back at him, "Well, as a filthy hussy I've worked for you since I could toddle, never less than fourteen hours a day and not a penny piece for it. An' the clothes on my back, an' my mother's, were droppin' off afore we could get a new rag. An' then they weren't new, were they? if you could manage to pick up something from the market stall. Even the food was begrudged us; we only got what you couldn't sell. Well, now you've got your money in the locked box in the attic, I hope it's a comfort to you, because you'll never have any other."

She felt sure he was going to have a fit. And when she saw him turn his cold, glaring eyes on the man, she knew what was in his mind: she had told a stranger about the locked box in the attic. He would go back now to the house and move it, perhaps bury it, like the cross had been buried. At the thought of the cross she laughed inside. If he'd had even an inkling of what they had found, he would have gone mad, really mad.

She had watched him walk away like someone drunk; but after he disappeared round the foot of the hill that bordered the hollow to the right of the cottage, her knees began to tremble so much that she felt she would fall to the ground. It was only the dealer's kindly tone that steadied her when he said, "Well, if I had to choose at ween him and the devil for me father, I know which side I'd jump to. Now don't take on, lass. Get yourself inside and if there's any way of making a hot drink, be it mead with the poker in it, or tea, or a small glass of beer or what have you, I'll be thankful for it, for like yourself I'm froze to the bone. And in the meanwhile, I'll get this stuff unloaded; then we can put it where you want it."

She had blown up the small fire in the grate, then had put a part of water on and made some tea.

An hour later, after the dealer had gone, she pushed the bolt in the door and sat crouched shivering near the fire, waiting for Nathaniel's return. And when he came she had flung herself into his arms and cried while she related her father's

visit and his last words to her. And what Nathaniel said in reply was, "Well, it's what we expected and we've got to weather it..."

The onslaught began a week later when the barn was set on fire. She could see herself even now springing up in bed to see the room glimmering in a rose glow and to hear the crackling sound of wood burning. They had rushed out and made straight for the well but had stopped when, with both hands on the bucket, Nathaniel had said, "It would take a river to put that out. A bucket is no use." But she had cried at him, "The sparks! They're catching here and there in the grass: if they spread, they'll get to the cottage."

The rate at which they were able to bring up water from the well would have been of little use had it not been that the grass was still wet from rain earlier in the day.

In the flickering light they saw shapes seeming to emerge from the shadows and a voice came through the night so high and loud that, for the moment, it shut out the crackling of the burning barn as it cried,

"It'll be your house next, the whore house." And so, maddened, Nathaniel had been about to rush in the direction from which he thought the voice had come when voices from different areas began to hoot and yell.

The following day Miss Netherton, after looking sadly on the burnt-out frame, said, "Well, I expected something like this. But it's got to be put a stop to in some way else your lives could be threatened." And Maria remembered thinking, They're already threatened.

The following week they had brought home the first goat. She was a sweet creature, already in milk, and they thankfully drank their fill from her; at least for the next three days, before she was found with her front legs broken.

She remembered holding the poor suffering animal in her arms and crying over it as if it were a child, her first child. Nathaniel had gone to Miss Netherton's to ask if Rob Stoddart, her coachman, or the lad, Peter Tollis, could come and shoot the animal and put it out of its misery, because he himself had never handled a gun. But from now on, he said, he would learn.

The matter of the goat had incensed Miss Nether- ton and she had her coachman drive her into the village and to the Vicarage. And there she had told the Vicar that if he didn't stop incensing his parishioners against her tenants, as she had called them, he would in future be doing without her patronage. But, apparently, he had said that whatever she did, he would carry out God's will. So, following this, she had walked boldly into the bar of The Swan, an action in itself which caused comment, because no woman ever went into the main bar of a public inn. But there she had addressed not only Reg Morgan, the innkeeper, but also Robert Lennon, the blacksmith and his eldest son.

Jack, as well as Willie Melton and his son. Dirk, who were painters and decorators, and she reminded them that of the thirty-two cottages and houses scattered around, she owned seventeen.

Next she had gone to the King's Head and there again, in the main bar, she had addressed Morris

Bergen and his wife. May, and John Fenton, the grocer, and two pit men from the nearby pit, Sam Taylor and Davy Fuller, who were known as louts and would do anything for an extra pint of ale. And addressing the latter two, she had pointedly reminded them that the owner of the mine was a friend of hers.

For the next four weeks they were left in peace. However, Miss Netherton had warned them to keep clear of the village, even if this meant going a mile or so out of their way across the fields and over the quarry-top to reach Fellburn to do their shopping, which they did in the middle of the week, so evading market day.

Then the climax came. It happened when they were walking just inside the copse that adjoined the Hill, or the Heap, as it was called, and from which the cottage had derived its name, that Maria let out such a fear-filled yell as she cried at Nathaniel, "Don't move!" and its effect on Nathaniel was immediate:

so abruptly did he halt his step that he almost fell on his face; then she pointed to a distance not two feet away from where he was standing and hissed, "A trap! A man trap

"No!" He had stood stock-still, gasping.

"Not that. They wouldn't."

They would. Oh, they would. "

"That settles it!" said Nathaniel.

"I'll have the law on them. Traps are forbidden now, even for animals.

And whoever set that could be having their eyes on us this minute, waiting for the screams. Will you stay there near it?" he asked her, but immediately changed his mind.

"No; I will," he

said; 'you run to Miss Netherton's and tell her. Tell her to come and see for herself. Then I'll take this matter to the Justices. I'll have a constable here and someone who can release that trap without losing a limb. "

She had picked up her skirts and run and had burst unceremoniously into Miss Netherton's kitchen and, finding no one there, had dashed into the hall, there to be confronted by the sight of the lady herself accompanied by two gentlemen. They had been laughing together but stopped, and Miss Netherton, leaving them, came towards her quickly, saying, "What is it? What is it, Maria?" And she had spluttered,

"They've set a man-trap. Nat nearly stepped into it, he's ... he's guardin' it. Will ... will you come and see?"

"A man-trap!" One of the gentlemen had stepped forward.

"Where is this?"

She didn't answer because Miss Netherton was already saying, "There is a feud going on between two friends of mine and the village. You remember the schoolmaster we talked about? I rented him a cottage, but those in the village have burnt down the barn, they have crippled his goat, and now they are aiming to cripple him or this young girl here."

"Well, we can put a stop to that, can't we?" The man had nodded towards her, and Miss Netherton had explained, "Mr. Raeburn is a Justice of the Peace and he will settle this once and for all."

The outcome of this and of what had come to Miss Netherton's knowledge through her coachman and the carpenter in the village, Roland Watts, relating to the person who had set the trap, was a visit from the law to the innkeeper of The Swan, the consequences being that Reg Morgan had to appear before the Justices on the 17th of March to answer the charge of unlawfully setting a man-trap to the danger of human life and limb.

Moreover, every tenant of Miss Netherton's in the village received what was then a law letter. It was written on thick paper and came from a firm in Newcastle. It indicated to the occupants that were Miss Netherton's tenants in Heap Hollow Cottage troubled in the slightest form in the future, the recipients of the letter would be given immediate notice; and it went on to indicate that it was up to them to see that the outrageous incidents against Miss Netherton's tenants ceased immediately.

So they were left alone; and they spoke to no-one except Miss Netherton and her small household or Roland Watts in the village, and the dressmaker, Miss Penelope Smythe, should the latter happen to meet them, which was rarely.

When the twins were born they did not go to the Parson to ask if he would christen the babies. But he had a field-day in the pulpit on the Sunday, for his sermon reached the greatest length yet, an hour and twenty minutes. And Miss Netherton had laughed when later she related to them: "He hadn't any voice left at the end of it; just enough to upbraid certain members of the congregation for falling asleep."

A kindly parson in Fellburn had christened the children, but the record went as follows:

September, 24th, 1862. Oswald and Olan, base-born sons of Maria Dagshaw,

begotten by Nathaniel Marten. Baptised October 20th, 1862.

This entry in the church register hurt her in some strange way, for she had imagined herself to be past hurt. But she was grateful to Parson Mason and his wife. Bertha, who had been kind to them both and who had laughingly said, "Your children being christened here makes them subjects for parish relief. But let's hope they never need it."

And Nathaniel had answered, "They never will."