"It isn't so heavy as it might be," Ralph answered. "A damp spring suits Hillside best."
"I sometimes wish your father had it instead of me." And Jenkins twisted his shoulders uncomfortably.
"Father is better off," Ralph answered slowly, looking across the valley to a distant line of hills.
"Ay, it's to be hoped so, for there ain't much better off here, I'm thinkin'. It's mostly worse off. And as we get owlder we feel it more 'n more."
"So you regret taking the farm already?" Ralph questioned almost unconsciously.
"I ded'n say so. We've got to make a livin' somehow, leastways we've got to try." And he turned suddenly round and walked into the house.
Ralph walked across the fields to interview Peter Ladock, whose farm adjoined. He struck the boundary hedge at a point where a gnarled and twisted oak made a feature in the landscape. Half-way over the hedge he paused abruptly. This was the point his father had asked him to keep in his memory, and yet until this moment he had never once thought of it.
Not that it mattered: the county was intersected with tin lodes, iron lodes, copper lodes, and lead lodes, and most of them would not pay for the working. And very likely this lode, if it existed—for, after all, his father had had very little opportunity of demonstrating its existence—would turn out to be no better than the rest.
For a moment he paused to draw an imaginary line to the chimney-top, as his father had instructed him, then he sprang off the hedge into Ladock's field and made his way towards his house. Peter, who knew his man, agreed to pay Ralph by the hour, and he could work as many hours as he liked.
To one less strong and healthy than Ralph it would have been killing work; but he did not seem to take any harm. Once a week came Sunday, and during that day he seemed to regain all that he had lost. Fortunately, too, during harvest-time the farmers provided extra food. There was "crowst" between meals, and supper when they worked extra late.