Abner settled down sulkily. Atwell had already forgotten the incident and was snoring in his corner. Mick hummed quietly the song about Macarthy, spitting through a chink in the window between the verses. The train jolted on into the darkness, crossing the deep valley of Severn, skirting the eastern foothills of the Long Mynd, sliding down with braked engine into the basin of Teme. At Craven Arms a Welsh cattle dealer joined them, a small, red-bearded man, who eyed them suspiciously and would not be drawn into talk with Mick Connor. The train climbed painfully, the air grew colder. Atwell’s snores joined with the clanking of the wheels to set a spell of drowsiness on Abner’s fuddled brain. He fell asleep. At Llandwlas Mick woke him. They tumbled out on to the deserted platform. Mary was nowhere to be seen. She had slipped him again, and though he was inclined to be angry at this unreasonable conduct he submitted to Mick’s suggestion that they should walk back to Chapel Green together and get another drink. Two traps passed them on the road, flinging an uncertain light upon the frosty hedges. From the first of them Susie called good-night; in the second they could see the helmets of the police, but no trace either of Mrs Malpas or Mary was to be seen on the road. The sleep had cleared Abner’s head. They walked quickly through the raw air and in a little more than an hour they saw the poplars of Chapel Green. ‘What about a drop at the Buffalo?’ said Mick. Even from a distance they could see that this forbidding resort had become unusually cheerful. It was now the time of evening at which the labouring men who formed the greater part of Mrs Malpas’s customers finished their quarts and went home to bed. As the three men approached, many voices were heard. ‘Sounds as if there’s a drop stirrin’,’ said Mick. ‘By the houly, an’ so there will be! There’s the Pound House, after being closed on them with Mr Hind and Susan away!’ He opened the door and a mist of tobacco smoke met the colder air. At the same moment a tall musical box, shaped like a grandfather clock and worked by a penny-in-the-slot apparatus, struck up the tune of Champagne Charlie. In front of it, beating time with a pint pot, dangerously full, stood Wigan Joe. The man was three-parts drunk, as were most of the other cloggers who crowded the bar. At his right hand, next the fire, sat old Mr Malpas, following with anxious eyes the evolutions of the big man’s tankard. The room was so full of smoke and occupied by the jingle of the musical box that Abner and his friends entered without the clogger realising that they were there. . . . ‘That’s a good rousing tune, lad,’ he cried, leaning over Mr Malpas and beating out the rhythm with his free hand on the old man’s shoulder. ‘Eh, it’s a grand night is this. Makes you feel like you’re young again. Let’s have another bloody penn’orth!’ Mr Malpas nodded, smiling feebly.