Abner and his friends even went so far as to pester these votaries of passion in their own most sheltered haunts. Above the pithead of the Great Mawne Colliery runs a lane skirting the ancient cherry orchard of Old Mawne Hall. It is short: at the end of it the pit-mound stands up black, and over beyond the Stour valley a desert of blackness stretches westward, with smoke-stacks thronging thick as masts of shipping in a harbour. Over its hedges, in the dusk, light clouds of cherry-blossom may be seen, but even before the wind has tumbled the petals down they are blackened by smuts from the colliery chimney. This lane, indeed, was a decorous walking place where one might hear a patter of moving feet and low laughter on any evening in May; but lower down the slope, past the colliery, it turned into another, shadowed with hot-smelling elder, stunted hawthorns and oak-apple trees, which had a darker reputation. Dipping down over the hillside this lane climbs back upon itself and opens out again into the orchard road. This loop, which is called in Halesby the ‘Dark Half-hour,’ was the favourite hunting ground for Abner and his friends. Carrying the smelly dark-lanterns that are sold on Guy Fawkes’ day, they would creep as quietly as possible under the shadows of the trees, selecting at a signalled moment some unfortunate couple locked in each other’s arms whom they might shame with their lights. Often they got their heads smacked, but this only served to reinforce their opinion that lovemaking which shrank from publicity was discreditable. One evening in summer when Abner was fourteen he took part in one of these expeditions. The day had been hot. His father had promised him that he would make him a kite in the evening. The split lath lay ready on the table with a roll of blue paper. Mrs Moseley had boiled some paste, and Abner had borrowed enough string and folded newspaper to make a tail. As the heat of the afternoon declined a gusty wind began to blow from the west, filling the street with dust and scraps of paper. At six o’clock John Fellows came back from the pit. The dust had blown into his eyes, that were never very strong. Tears and sweat together were tracking down through the grime on his cheeks. He seemed to have forgotten all about Abner’s kite. ‘What’s that?’ he cried, irritably. ‘Can’t yo’ give us a moment’s peace? Wait till I’ve swilled!’ He had his swill in the brewhouse, filling a tin bath with black soap-suds. The kite had become a grievance. ‘Nattering away . . .’ he muttered, with his head in a roller towel, ‘werriting about kites on a day that would make a pig sweat blood!’