The middle weeks of August were come—­sunny, sultry weeks; and from the brow of the hill, all the vast plain lying westward for many miles looked golden with the corn ripening for harvest.  The oats in the little field had already been reaped; and the fruit in the garden, gathered and sold by Martha, had brought in a few shillings, which were carefully hoarded up to buy winter clothing.  It was now the time of the yearly gathering of bilberries on the hills; and tribes of women and children ascended to the tableland from all the villages round.  It was the pleasantest work of the year; and Martha, who had never missed the bilberry season since she could remember, was not likely to miss it now.  Even little Nan could help to pick the berries, and she and Martha were out on the hillsides all the livelong summer day.  Their dwelling on the spot gave them a good advantage over those who lived down in Botfield; and each day, before any of the others could reach the best bilberry-wires, they had already picked a quart of the small purple berries, fresh and cool with the dew of the morning.  Only the poor old grandfather had to be left at home alone, with his dinner put ready for him, which he was apt to eat up long before the proper dinner-hour came; and then he had to wait until Stephen returned from his work, or Martha and little Nan were driven home by the August thunderstorms.  Martha was wonderfully successful this year, and gained more money by selling her bilberries than she thought necessary to show to Stephen; though, on his part, he always brought her every penny of his wages.

Ever since their father’s funeral there had been a subject of dispute between the brother and sister.  Martha was bent upon enclosing the green dell, with its clear, cool little pond; and to this end she spent all the time she could spare in raising a rough fence of stones and peat round it.  But Stephen would not consent to it; and neither argument, scolding, nor coaxing could turn him.  He always answered that he had promised the master that he would not trespass on the manor; and he must stand to his word, whatever they might lose by it; though, indeed, he saw no harm in making green fields out of the waste land.  Martha, on her side, maintained her right as the eldest to act as she judged best; and, moreover, urged the example of her thrifty grandmother, who had planned this very enclosure, and whose pattern she was determined to follow.  But before long the dispute was ended, and the subject of it became a matter of heart-troubling wonder, for several labourers from the master’s farm began to fence in the very same ground, as well as to prepare the turf behind Fern’s Hollow for the planting of young trees; and neither Stephen nor Martha could hide from the other that these labours made them feel exceedingly uneasy.

‘I say, Stephen,’ said one of the hedgers, as he was going down from his work one evening, and met the tired boy coming up from his, ’I’m afeared there’s some mischief brewing.  There’s master, and Mr. Thomas, and Mr. Jones the gamekeeper, been talking with thy grandfather nigh upon an hour.  There’ll be a upshot some day, I know; and Jones, he said summat about leaving a keepsake for thee.’