There was only one woman in the Pound House: Susie Hind, the fine, strapping girl whose presence had disturbed him on his first visit to the inn with George. Mrs Malpas’s hints had led him to believe that she was an old flame of George’s. He found himself comparing her with George’s wife and thinking of the silence and remoteness of Mary he felt it was easy to understand why George had been led away. The freedom of Susie’s manners had suggested that she was attainable. Abner, listening to the gunner’s adventures, brooded on this, and the more he did so the more desirable Susie became. There seemed to him no reason why he should not possess her. Every night he sat in the Pound House looking at her. He drank more than he need have done simply in order that he might remain in her presence. This inflamed his imagination and magnified in his eyes the physical elegance which she regarded as necessary to her calling, but he hardly dared to speak to her openly in this concourse of men, and when she came near him with her bold but beautiful eyes, his heart beat wildly and he could say nothing. He usually stayed in the alehouse till closing time and walked back to Wolfpits through the haunted night arm-in-arm with George Malpas who was by this time a little sentimental. In one of these walks he asked George about his relations with Susie. ‘Oh, she’s all right, you can take my word for that,’ said George with a laugh. ‘Yo’ve seen a good bit of her,’ said Abner. ‘All I want to,’ George replied, with a wink that was invisible in the darkness. Abner was silent and he continued: ‘You’d best go easy for a bit, though. For the time being she’s took up with that devil Badger. But that won’t last. I know our Susie, bless her heart! Susie has her fancies.’ Abner knew already that there was something between Susie Hind and Badger. He had watched their whispers jealously often enough. Now he began to examine their intimacies more closely. The general unpopularity of Badger’s occupation only helped to increase his jealousy. When he saw their hands meet over the counter he felt that the natural thing to do would be to rise from his seat, take Badger by the neck and throw him out of the bar. He measured the thickset keeper with a fighter’s eye, and felt confident that he was a match for him. Meanwhile he must bide his time.