The encampment, as he had first explained to Abner, was one of many such that may be found scattered up and down the length of the Radnor march in summertime. The men who inhabit them are known as cloggers. They come from the black industrial towns of Lancashire, and their business is the making of wooden clogs. All are skilled labourers, and in each of their communities there is a foreman on whom the commercial responsibilities of the venture falls. Early in spring he makes a visit to the border country and bargains with farmers and landowners for the right to cut the thickets of black alder that choke the bottom of every valley in this western brookland. In May the rest of the gang follow and there begins a nomadic life in which they wander from valley to valley, felling the thickets, stripping the black bark from wood of a milky whiteness and cutting billets of a size suitable for clog-making. On rainy days when their harvest is well in hand, they carry the process further, and set to making the clogs themselves. Sometimes they live under canvas on the site of their labours; sometimes they find lodgings in the nearest village; always, as strangers—or rather as migrants—they carry with them a reputation for boldness and extravagance in speech and behaviour; but, for all that, the border people make much of them, knowing that they earn plenty of money and spend it freely. The valley on which Abner and his friend had lighted was by this time nearly stripped of its alders. Piles of clean white billets stood bleaching in the morning sun ready to be carted to the nearest point on the railway. ‘You’re not afther wanting a hand with the wood?’ Mick asked. ‘No, lad,’ said the big man, ‘this is a tradesman’s job. You’ll get work right enough up by Chapel Green. You tell the foreman that Wigan Joe sent you along. But happen you’ll find it hard to get a lodge there. Come Tuesday we’re makin’ a shift to Mainstone Bottom, and me and my mates are going to take a lodging in the Buffalo. Old Mr Malpas or his son George’ll see you right. Happen we’ll have a quart together then. Come on, lads. . .’ Abner and Mick took their dismissal and moved off together. The sun was now high and not a shred of mist remained in all the river basin. Before this it had seemed confined on every side by high hills thickly wooded. Now, to westward, far greater hills arose, huge, bare, and dappled with shadows of the last retreating clouds. While they breakfasted Abner had laid out his tobacco to dry in the sun. They lighted their pipes and walked on cheerily, Mick singing fragments of a song about the Sultan of the Turks and the Irish Board of Works. They crossed the river Teme by a stone bridge above a glassy pool. ‘I’m telling you there’s a fine lot of salmon in there,’ said Mick. ‘Salmon?’ asked Abner, who had only been acquainted with the tinned variety of this fish.