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.'
'What could it be, William?' asked Stephen anxiously.
'How should I know?' said the man, with some reluctance. 'Only, lad, I did hear a gun go off; and I never heard Snip bark again, though I listened for him. Stephen, Stephen, dunna thee go so mad like!'
But it was no use shouting after Stephen, as he ran frantically up the hill. Snip was always basking lazily in the sunshine under the hedge of the paddock, at the very point where he could catch the first sight of his young master, after which there was no more idleness or stillness in him. Stephen could hardly breathe when he found that Snip was not at the usual place to greet him; but before he reached his home he saw it--the dead body of his own poor Snip--hung on the post of the wicket through which he had to pass. He flew to the place; he tore his own hands with the nails that were driven through Snip's feet; and then, without a thought of his grandfather or of his own hunger, he bore away the dead dog in his arms, and wandered far out of sight or sound of the hateful, cruel world, into one of the most solitary plains upon the uplands.