Chapter 2

CHAPTER II.

In the room from which this cheerful blaze proceeded, he beheld a
girl seated on a willow chair, and busily occupied by the light of
the fire, which was ample and of wood. With a bill-hook in one
hand and a leather glove, much too large for her, on the other,
she was making spars, such as are used by thatchers, with great
rapidity. She wore a leather apron for this purpose, which was
also much too large for her figure. On her left hand lay a bundle
of the straight, smooth sticks called spar-gads--the raw material
of her manufacture; on her right, a heap of chips and ends--the
refuse--with which the fire was maintained; in front, a pile of
the finished articles. To produce them she took up each gad,
looked critically at it from end to end, cut it to length, split
it into four, and sharpened each of the quarters with dexterous
blows, which brought it to a triangular point precisely resembling
that of a bayonet.

Beside her, in case she might require more light, a brass
candlestick stood on a little round table, curiously formed of an
old coffin-stool, with a deal top nailed on, the white surface of
the latter contrasting oddly with the black carved oak of the
substructure. The social position of the household in the past
was almost as definitively shown by the presence of this article
as that of an esquire or nobleman by his old helmets or shields.
It had been customary for every well-to-do villager, whose tenure
was by copy of court-roll, or in any way more permanent than that
of the mere cotter, to keep a pair of these stools for the use of
his own dead; but for the last generation or two a feeling of cui
bono had led to the discontinuance of the custom, and the stools
were frequently made use of in the manner described.

The young woman laid down the bill-hook for a moment and examined
the palm of her right hand, which, unlike the other, was ungloved,
and showed little hardness or roughness about it. The palm was
red and blistering, as if this present occupation were not
frequent enough with her to subdue it to what it worked in. As
with so many right hands born to manual labor, there was nothing
in its fundamental shape to bear out the physiological
conventionalism that gradations of birth, gentle or mean, show
themselves primarily in the form of this member. Nothing but a
cast of the die of destiny had decided that the girl should handle
the tool; and the fingers which clasped the heavy ash haft might
have skilfully guided the pencil or swept the string, had they
only been set to do it in good time.

Her face had the usual fulness of expression which is developed by
a life of solitude. Where the eyes of a multitude beat like waves
upon a countenance they