When the day came he had not the heart to set out in quest of work. Instead of doing so he lounged all morning, and after dinner took the children out for a long walk over the stark, wintry fields. They were wildly excited to go with him, for it was now many months since they had known such a holiday. Mary watched them, smiling as they left Wolfpits. She saw that they were happy, and marvelled at her own happiness. Abner and the children made their way through the silent larchwoods to the top of Castel Ditches and sat there gazing idly down upon the river valleys. About the time when cohorts of starlings wheeled through the sky above the reed-beds of the Barbel where they made their nightly roosting place, the three of them dropped down the slope towards the waterworks. There Abner found a diminished gang still working on the last details of the track. The sidings, the cranes, and the engines were gone, and in place of the trenches on which Abner had worked a year before, he now saw trim walls, culverts, and bridges of stone. A single wooden hut remained standing, and there he found the Gunner rubbing his hands over a bucket of coke. He stared at Abner as though he were a stranger. ‘Well, our Abner,’ he cried, when he recognised him, ‘how goes it? I thought you’d left these parts long ago. What have you been up to?’ ‘Farm-labouring, up at The Dyke,’ Abner told him. ‘That’s a poor game,’ said the Gunner, shaking his head. ‘Don’t I know it!’ said Abner. ‘I’ve just finished with it. . . Can’t you give us a job here?’ ‘No, my son . . . nor any one else,’ said the Gunner. ‘We’re just clearing up like. I’ve got ten men of the old gang left, but in another week we shall have finished the lot. Don’t you imagine I’m sorry for it either. I’ve had enough of Mainstone to last me for a bit.’ ‘Well, I’ve got to get a job somehow,’ said Abner. ‘Then you won’t get it here. This place is dead, my son, and that’s the truth! You’d best get back to dear old Brum. Or Coventry, that’s the place for you. Everybody’s going mad on these here motor-cars the same as they did on bicycles. Coventry’s your ticket!’ He gave the children a red-cheeked apple apiece. Abner bade him good-night and turned homewards. ‘Did you hear about our wedding at the Pound House?’ the foreman shouted after him. ‘Whisky? You could have swum in it! Pity old Mick wasn’t about.’ It was dusk when Abner reached Wolfpits. He began his quest for a new job hopefully, undeterred by the foreman’s warning or the still gloomier prophecies of old man Drew. He knew that work was scarce at that season; but it could not well be scarcer than it had been when he found continued employment at The Dyke. Abner felt that luck would come to him in much the same unexpected way.