In a way this desertion of Hackett’s Cottages was a good thing for Abner, for it drove him out into the open air and rid his lungs of the coal-dust that he breathed in the galleries of the pit. Joe Hodgetts, now more than ever his friend and admirer, shared these joys. Together they roamed over all the sweet country-side that ponders above the smoke of Mawne. They did not know that it was beautiful. They only knew that there were banks of hazel under which one might play pitch and toss or nap without the fear of a policeman; that there were cool streams with bottoms of red sand in which it was good to bathe; that there were rabbits that came out timidly in the evening to be shot with catapults, and wood-pigeons that rustled the trees on the edge of Uffdown Wood and then emerged with clapping wings. Both boys had the instincts of poachers, and in the spring another partner joined them: an equivocal terrier with a sandy coat, a long, thin tail and a guttersnipe’s intelligence which Abner got for the asking from a miner at Mawne who didn’t think the beast worth the cost of a licence. He couldn’t house the animal in Hackett’s Cottages, for Alice couldn’t abear dogs . . . the dirty beasts! Abner’s old friend, Mrs Moseley, came to his help. The dog, now christened Tiger, found a home in her washhouse, living among his hoarded bones on a strip of sacking in the ash-hole beneath the copper. Here he would lie in the evening waiting for his master, his thin snout pressed to the ground between extended paws, motionless, pretending to be asleep. When he heard Abner’s step approaching he would lie still, with gleaming open eyes, and wait for his name to be called. Then he would leap out and lick the pit-dust from Abner’s face with his tongue. Even Mrs Moseley, who fed him, was nothing to Tiger if Abner were there. Together they would go out into the golden evening hunting rabbits which Abner would sometimes bring home to Mrs Moseley, who had a way of cooking them with onions soused in milk. They were a great treat to her, for being a widow and no longer employed in John Fellows’s house, she rarely tasted meat. Sharing the proceeds of their hunting Abner and Mrs Moseley would sit late over their tea next day, and Tiger, under the table, would crack the rabbit’s head and lick out the brains with his pointed tongue. Later in the week Mrs Moseley would sell the rabbit-skin to a rag-and-bones man for twopence. She was really very fond of Abner, and even if he hadn’t brought food to the house she would have been glad of his visits, ‘for company’ as she called it.