Hannah Lowe wrapped the stone in her shawl, said a short prayer for forgiveness, and broke the scullery window of the Duke of Ashmere's house.The sound was small. That surprised her: she had expected the whole valley to hear it, every dog in Lower Ashmere to start barking, the church bell to ring out a warning. Instead, there was only a dull crack, a little tinkle of glass on the stone floor inside, and the wind carrying snow sideways across the hill."Is that it?" whispered her brother Sam.He was eight years old, and he was holding the handle of their father's old trunk with both hands because he had been told to hold it, and he did what he was told."That's it," said Hannah. "Mind the glass."She reached through the broken pane, found the latch, and lifted it. The window swung inward. Cold air came out of the house to meet them, colder even than the air outside—the cold of rooms that had not known a fire in many years.Ashmere House had stood dark on its hill for nine winters. Everyone in the village knew that. The Duke had shut it up after his mother died, and he had never come back: no candle in the windows, no smoke from the chimneys. Only Mr. Silas Pike, the Duke's land agent, rode up once a month to look at it, and came down again looking satisfied.It was Mr. Pike who had put Hannah and her brother into the snow at noon that same day.Her father, Walter Lowe, had been the village chandler. He made candles—the best in the district—and he had died in October with three months of rent unpaid on the shop. Hannah had asked Mr. Pike for time; she had offered to pay from the Christmas trade. Mr. Pike had smiled at her, said the estate could not wait, and sent two men to carry her father's trunk out into the lane on Christmas Eve.Then she had knocked on doors. Every house in Lower Ashmere rented from the estate, and every tenant was afraid of Mr. Pike. One by one, the doors had closed, kindly or unkindly, and the snow had kept falling, and Sam had started to cough, and so here she was: a respectable young woman of 23 climbing through the Duke of Ashmere's scullery window with a carpet bag in her teeth.Hannah dropped down onto the stone floor and turned to lift Sam through. He came in light as a bundle of kindling. Together they pulled the trunk over the sill, which took some doing, and then Hannah shut the window and stuffed her shawl into the broken pane.It was very dark.