This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler THE BLACK DIAMOND _by_ FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG * * * * * [Picture: Logo] LONDON AND GLASGOW COLLINS’ CLEAR-TYPE PRESS * * * * * Copyright First Impression February, 1921 Second ,, March, 1921 Third ,, March, 1922 Fourth ,, April, 1922 Fifth ,, May, 1922 Sixth ,, September, 1922 * * * * * _Manufactured in Great Britain_ * * * * * TO M. COMPTON MACKENZIE GRATEFULLY : AFFECTIONATELY * * * * * The First Chapter ABNER FELLOWS was born in the front bedroom of Number Eleven Hackett’s Cottages, a four-roomed house of old brickwork that stood in the middle of a row of twenty-one, set diagonally across a patch of waste land on the outskirts of Halesby. The terrace was fifty years old, and looked older, for the smoke and coal dust of the neighbouring pits had corroded the surface of the bricks, while the ‘crowning in’ of the earth’s crust above the gigantic burrowings of the Great Mawne Colliery had loosened the mortar between them and even produced a series of long cracks that clove the house-walls from top to bottom like conventional forked lightning. One of these lines of cleavage split the face of Number Eleven and ran through the middle of a plaster plaque on which the pious owner of the cottages had carved the words:— _ISAIAH HACKETT_: _GLORY BE TO GOD_, _1839_. This plaque, together with the metal medallion of a fire insurance corporation and two iron bosses connected with the system of stays by which Mr Hackett’s descendants had tried to save their property from collapsing, made the Fellows’s house the most decorative feature of the row, and gave Abner a feeling of enviable distinction in his childhood long before he knew what they meant.