But the youngest son, Marsh, whenever he was allowed free time, attempted to overcome his limp. He’d wake in the dark and walk past houses they had once thatched, or go down into the river valleys as night began dissolving, already with birdsong. It was the hour with that tense new light that Marsh Felon now began searching for in books whenever the writer strayed from a plot to attempt a description of that special hour, perhaps remembered from the author’s youth too. The boy began reading every evening. It allowed him a deafness while his brothers talked. Even if he knew the thatcher’s
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