Coll Tresidder Raises His Bid

The message from the far bank came by lamp, three short shows and a long one, which at Ruddock Ferry meant a bone was broken and someone wanted the setter. Coll Tresidder had his splints bundled in twine and his bid in at a tenth of a drop a span before the far lamp went dark again. Then the hills gave nothing for the better part of an hour.

It was the third such wait since morning, and the regulars on the bench had stopped joking about it. A woman with a crate of ducklings said the Houses were sulking. A tanner said the Veil was holding thick and the lamps couldn’t keep up. Coll said nothing. He was thinking of a leg setting crooked while he sat on a plank.

When the Tide House runner finally came down the bank, salt-stiff, calling Maudry Kell’s catch, the clerk chalked the new terms: three drops and some, a span. The ducklings stayed. The tanner swore and stayed. Coll counted what was in his purse, which was his supper, his lodging and a little over, and pushed nearly all of it across the board.

“You’ll sleep in a hedge,” the clerk said.

“Then the child walks to see me do it,” Coll said, and went down the plank with his splints under his arm, the only fare-payer in his row who didn’t look back at the bench.