But though he searched everywhere he could not find it. He appealed again to Mary, but she had no money, not a single penny. Abner had nothing but a handful of coppers left. ‘They must have took both of them . . . picked my pocket!’ he said. She advised him to look again, but it was useless. ‘While we was standing up again’ those railings,’ he muttered, ‘talking to that gipsy woman. It’s gone right enough. Not a bloody cent except this!’ He threw the coppers on the sill of the booking window. ‘Had your pocket picked?’ said the station-master with a laugh. ‘It’s not the first time that’s happened at Bron Fair!’ A bell clanged in the signal box, and a porter peered at them through the door with a stupid, rustic face. ‘Can’t you let us have a ticket on strap?’ Abner asked. ‘Not likely!’ said the stationmaster. ‘I’ve heard that tale before.’ ‘The little girl’s had an accident . . . broken her leg,’ Mary pleaded. The station-master shook his head. ‘There’s not another train to-day,’ she said. ‘Have we time to try and get some money in the village?’ The porter gave a stupid laugh. ‘Train’s two minutes overdue now,’ said the station-master blandly, glancing at the clock on the booking-office wall. ‘But what can we do?’ she cried. The train clanked in. A number of country people in their Sunday clothes, coming from the villages under the Long Mynd, swarmed on to the platform. They came laughing into the booking-office. ‘All tickets!’ shouted the porter at the door. Abner was still rummaging in his pockets when the train went out. They were left quite alone. ‘What can we do?’ Mary repeated, in a voice full of trouble. ‘We’ve got to walk, that’s all,’ said Abner. ‘But you can’t carry her all that way!’ ‘It’s only eight or nine miles over the hills. We can walk that easy before dark if we take our time.’ She shook her head. ‘There’s Morgan,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to help Morgan on a bit.’ ‘It’s too much. You can’t carry her all that way.’ He laughed at her and, in the end, persuaded her. By this time Morgan, awake and refreshed, was again clamouring for food. In the post-office at Redlake they bought him a packet of acid-drops and some biscuits. ‘Now that’s got to last you, my son,’ Mary told him, and for the present he was satisfied. They set out slowly on their journey home. For a mile or more the road ran along the side of the little river, but soon the valley fell away beneath them, a deep trough clogged with brushwood, and the road degenerated into a stony track. It seemed that they had now penetrated a country that was untouched by the excitements of Bron Fair, for whenever they came near to a farm, and these grew fewer and fewer, being hidden for the most part in folds of the hills and lost in sheltering trees, they found men moving slowly about the fields or calling cattle to the byre for the evening’s milking.