Compass, flintlock pistol and roses

The compass came back on Tuesday with the carrier's cart, wrapped in your old flannel shirt, and I have been turning it over on the kitchen table ever since. The needle will not sit still. It swings to the lamp, to the kettle, to the iron poker by the range, and when I carried it out to the yard it pointed straight at the spoil heap behind the engine house as though the hill were calling it home. Mr Pascoe says it is the lode under the village, that the ground is so full of tin and copper the old needles all go mad. I told him you would have laughed at that.

The pistol is still on the mantel where you left it, Father's flintlock with the scrolled work on the grip. I dusted it on Sunday and found a dark spot on the stock that I did not like, so I rubbed it with oil until my arm ached. The roses in the garden have gone over, but Mrs Hosking sent a bunch round from her yard, pink and blowsy, and I put them in the blue jug beside the clock so the room smells of something other than coal.

I have not decided whether to send the compass back. You wrote that the sea runs true, that a man only has to keep his bearing and the land will come up to meet him. Out here the land comes up under your boots and drags the needle off course. Perhaps you should come home and tell me which way is north.

Your loving sister, Nell