Location:The Millford road — the Halbrook holding; the yard; the stone barn
Date/Time:TC1858.03.02
Frost had skinned the underside of every stone in the wall, and it burned Ivo's fingers through the wool.
He set it on the barrow with the others and blew into his gloves and went back for the next. The field wall ran along the road side of the holding for longer than he'd ever bothered to pace, dry-laid, waist-high, the stones fitted by somebody's grandfather and frozen together since the first month. You had to rock each one before it would come. Rock it, feel it give, get your fingers under, lift with your legs. By midmorning he'd stopped feeling the cold and started feeling the stones, which was worse.
Bett had said the floor at first light, and nothing else, and gone to get the barrow.
