The sky was completely overcast, the clouds low, and the winds held a hint of snow in the offing. Indeed, it had snowed sometime in the past two days, for the trees-the poor, bare trees-along the way cupped it in the fork of their branches, and the piles of leaves on the ground were half-smothered in white, as were the fallow pastures and fields last plowed into furrows in Spring. All the crops were harvested, now, the last good from them raked and reaped and gleaned, with only a hayrick here and there, topped with scrap tarpaulin to keep off the wet.

Most of the feed livestock, Lewrie knew, would have been slaughtered by now, too-the beef, mutton, and pork salted, smoked, sugar-cured, or submerged in the large stone crocks filled with preserving lard. It was only the young and breeding beasts that remained in the pastures by the road, in the styes or pens within sight from the rumbling, jouncing coach, and the dray waggon that followed.

"Fair lotta sheep, hereabout, ain't they, sor?" Liam Desmond enquired with a quirky uplift of one corner of his mouth.

"Thousands 'pon thousands of 'em," Lewrie told him. "The comin' thing in the North Downs, since before the American Revolution. We've about two hundred, last time I got an accounting."

"Nothin' like good roast lamb, sor, sure there ain't," Desmond said with a chuckle. Liam Desmond no longer was garbed in a sailor's "short clothing" but wore dark brown "ditto," his coat and trousers of the same coloured broadcloth. He sported a buff-coloured waist-coat, a white linen shirt, even a white neck-stock, and, with triple-caped overcoat and a grey farmer's hat, could almost be mistaken for a man of the squirearchy… one who rented his acres, not owned them, at least.

"You'll founder on lamb and mutton by Easter," Lewrie said with a wry laugh, for by previous experience, in the country, he'd seen that particular dish on his table rather more than thrice a week.