The Tinner's Corpse
“It was no more than a couple of farms and some scattered shepherds’ huts, where the two upper branches of the Dart met to form the river that meandered down to the sea twenty miles away. The rolling moors spread around them, like a fossilised ocean, some crowned by weird tors – flattened, wind-scoured rocks piled up into fantastic shapes.
They plodded down into the valley from Yartor Down to the ancient clapper bridge, at the end of a long, winding, eight-mile track from Ashburton, seeking shel...ter for the night, which was heralded by the closing dusk. De Wolfe reined in alongside the bridge. ‘This side or the other, Gwyn?’ On this bank there was a longhouse of cob under thatch, with two barns behind it. On the other side of the Dart, he could see a larger dwelling with wattle and daub walls within a timbered frame, but only one barn and a couple of ramshackle sheds adjacent.
The Cornishman settled for the nearer demesne. ‘We’re not likely to get room by the house fire, with all these damned tinners congregating for the morning, so let’s try for a pile of hay in a barn.’ It was true that that day the moorland tracks had been busier than usual, with groups of men drifting towards Crockern Tor, almost four miles further on.MoreLess
They plodded down into the valley from Yartor Down to the ancient clapper bridge, at the end of a long, winding, eight-mile track from Ashburton, seeking shel...ter for the night, which was heralded by the closing dusk. De Wolfe reined in alongside the bridge. ‘This side or the other, Gwyn?’ On this bank there was a longhouse of cob under thatch, with two barns behind it. On the other side of the Dart, he could see a larger dwelling with wattle and daub walls within a timbered frame, but only one barn and a couple of ramshackle sheds adjacent.
The Cornishman settled for the nearer demesne. ‘We’re not likely to get room by the house fire, with all these damned tinners congregating for the morning, so let’s try for a pile of hay in a barn.’ It was true that that day the moorland tracks had been busier than usual, with groups of men drifting towards Crockern Tor, almost four miles further on.MoreLess
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