Note (return) — Chapter III · CONCERNING THE GATE-POST

There came an evening in mid-September when Will sat at the open hearth and smoked, with his eyes fixed on a fire of scads.13 He remained very silent, and Phoebe, busy about a small coat of red cloth, to keep the cold from her little son’s bones during the coming winter, knew that it was not one of her husband’s happiest evenings. His eyes were looking through the fire and the wall behind it, through the wastes and wildernesses beyond, through the granite hills to the far-away edge of the world, where Fate sat spinning the threads of the lives of his loved ones. Threads they looked, in his gloomy survey of that night, much deformed with knot and tangle, for the Spinner cared nothing at all about them. She suffered each to wind heedlessly away; she minded not that they were ugly; she spared no strand of gold or silver from her skein of human happiness to brighten the grey fabric of them. So it seemed to Will, and his temper chimed with the rough night. The wind howled and growled down the chimney, uttered many a sudden yell and ghostly moan, struck with claws invisible at the glowing heart of the peat fire, and sent red sparks dancing from a corona of faint blue flame.