By this time he was getting used to finding himself an object of suspicion. He determined to give Harverton Priors a miss, for at this time of night it was probable that the whole village would be asleep, and to turn in for the night in the first isolated barn that he found. Failing that there was no reason why he shouldn’t sleep in a dry ditch. His father had often done so unintentionally and so far seemed none the worse for it. A mile or more from that inhospitable inn he saw the kind of building for which he was looking standing in a field on the left of the road. It was a red-brick barn, half-timbered like the houses of the neighbourhood. A group of cows lay ruminating in their sleep on the far side of it and Abner picked his way between their shadowy shapes to a doorway with an oak beam for lintel. A rough door closed the aperture. At first he thought that it was locked or bolted but it yielded to his pressure. He half expected to find some animal inside, for when he first came to the door he had heard a noise like a calf turning in straw. He struck a match carefully. The place was clean and dry, half filled with hay of the last season’s harvest that had evidently been placed there for winter fodder. He decided that the rustling that he had heard must have been made by rats. Well, rats wouldn’t worry him in his present degree of tiredness. He closed the door and sank down easily into a soft, sweet-smelling bed. He lay still on his back with his eyes wide open staring into the darkness above him, thinking of the extraordinary variety of adventures that had filled the last twenty-four hours. This time last night, he reflected, he must have been dozing in the corner of the tram-car between Dulston and Mawne. Now he had nothing left to remind him of his old life except the clothes he was wearing . . . not even Tiger. He wondered what his father was feeling like now; wondered what had happened to Alice. He had never before thought so tenderly of her. She had shown what she was made of when she slipped the two sovereigns into his pocket. When he got work in Wales, he decided, he would send her money . . . not that she would really need it, for now sheer necessity would compel John Fellows to go back to the pit, unless indeed he had any of the money left that he had stolen from Abner. The thought of his savings suddenly reminded him what a fool he had been not to search his father’s pockets before he left the house. On the whole he wasn’t sorry that he had left him undisturbed. He didn’t feel unkindly toward him, for he recognised that no man is responsible for what he says or does when he is drunk. In the black-country people who know the rougher side of life are always ready to condone crimes of passion or liquor. ‘The old chap’s welcome to the money,’ Abner thought, ‘leastwise if any of it comes our Alice’s way.’