A Croft in the Hills Read Online Free Page A

of December, when the house was more or less straight and Peter had departed, with a twinge of regret, I think, that he had to go back to the city treadmill, we
felt we were really settled in. That first evening on our own I went out after dark to get some washing-water from the butt by the back door. I stood, kettle in hand, staring at the sky beyond Ben
Wyvis. Great pale beams were moving, like searchlights, across the whole northern section of the heavens. I called to Jim and he stood with me, gazing at these incredibly beautiful northern lights.
Then we fetched Helen, wrapped her in a big coat, and held her in our arms, while we all three watched the spectacle. Jim and I felt very small and very humble but young Helen gurgled with delight.
At once we joined in her response: this was her inheritance, she had recognised it at once. It was the first of the joys she was to discover in and around the house on the hill.

CHAPTER III
    WINTER AND ROUGH WEATHER
    As though to put us through a lovers’ test our small domain soon took on its most forbidding aspect. We were hardly into December when the first snow came whirling out of
the south-west. We woke one morning to find the doors and windows plastered, as though some giant had hurled a vast white pudding at the house.
    The first essential was to keep warm. Luckily, we had already got a good stock of logs sawn and split and there were some peats in the barn, left over from the year before, so we could be fairly
lavish with fires.
    Normally we relied on the kitchen stove for warmth in the daytime and only lit a fire in the living-room in the evening, when we had leisure to sit at it, before bed. But we kept a blaze going
in the living-room all that day and, last thing at night, we carried shovelfuls of red embers to the bedroom grate. We put Helen’s cot in our room and unearthed all the spare blankets and so
spent quite a snug night.
    By next morning the road was blocked with snow-drifts, and it was the day the grocer’s van was due. Over a steaming cup of morning tea I mentally reviewed the contents of the larder. It
was not very promising; we had been caught unawares. Having as yet no sources of supply of our own, we were certainly not equipped to ride out a storm.
    The first thing to do was to get water. The pump was not yet connected and, if this weather were to continue, it looked as though the chances of our having water in the tap before spring-time
would be fairly remote. Jim took a pail and a shovel and went to dig out the well. Then we thawed out the tap on the water-butt and filled a big crock with washing-water. While I prepared a meal
with our last tin of meat, Helen, in snow-suit and gum-boots, went out to revel in her first snow and Jim knocked up a sledge.
    In the early afternoon we set off, with Helen perched on the sledge, in search of eggs from a neighbour, half a mile down the road. It was heavy going but we returned home in triumph with all
the eggs intact. The sky was pure, deep blue and there was a sparkling silence everywhere. Our little house looked more snug and secure than ever in its winter setting and we felt the bonds that
linked us to it grow perceptibly stronger.
    Jim brought in more logs while I made an enormous dish of scrambled eggs and then we shut the door reluctantly on the stars and drew the supper-table close to the fire.
    All that month winter fretted at us. There was little we could do outside but repair fences between the storms, but we carried several fallen tree-trunks down on our shoulders and cut them with
a cross-cut saw. On the fine days we would work away at the chopping and splitting till the sky faded to mauve and clear shades of green and gold came up about the setting sun. Every morning, when
I opened the door, I would find two out-wintered Shetland ponies waiting patiently for their bite of bread. They belonged to a distant neighbour and one day we had taken pity on them and given them
some crusts. So