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"Good-night. Good-night all," and made his way towards the carriage.

They stood and watched the horses being turned on the frost-bitten ground and they remained standing round the opened door until the side lights of the carriage had disappeared through the gate and onto the narrow road.

With the closing of the door, there was a general expression of shivering and a making for the warmth of the fire, and although they talked and chattered about the events of the day, a quietness now seemed to have descended on them, and presently Oswald said, "It's one of the nicest Christmases I can remember, and we've had some nice ones, haven't we, Dada?"

"Yes, Oswald; we've had some nice ones, but as you say I think this is the nicest. I suppose it's because we've made a child happy and he needed to be made happy. He's had no life, no child's life, from what Anna tells us. He's to be pitied, in a way." Then turning his gaze onto Bobby, who had his head down, he said, "I don't retract on that, Bobby. There are many worse things than an empty belly in this world.

You can't live on love, I know, but it helps a slice of dry bread to taste as if it had butter on it. "

"Oh, I know, I know, Mr. Marten, I know what you mean. An' I've watched the hairn the day; it's just as if he had been let loose."

"Have you enjoyed yourself, Bobby?" The sudden enquiry brought his head sharply round to look at Cherry, and he stared at her for a moment before he said, with a grin, "You know, if I knew you better I would say that was a bloomin' silly question to ask me." And this wrought a change back to laughter, his own being the loudest: but then, with a slight break in his voice, he looked at Maria and said, "You'll never know really what you've done for me this Christmas. What you've all done for me. To me dying day I'll remember it. Whatever else happens in me life I'll remember this day." He turned to look at Cherry again and said, "You've got your answer." And she laughed, her mouth wide, saying, "I can see how they wanted to throw you out of the pit; you talk too much."

Their reactions to something funny was back, and again there was general laughter, for the whole family had noted and remarked on how the young fellow hardly ever opened his mouth; and Anna had asked her father: "Does he talk much when he's learning his reading?" to be told, "It's forced in a way, but it's getting better."

They weren't late in going to bed, and it was after the two girls had lain silently side by side for some time that Cherry said softly, "I like him."

"Who?"

"Bobby."

This caused Anna to turn on her side and face her sister, and say,

"What d'you mean by that, you like him?"

"Just what I said."

"Which I take it to mean, you more than like him?"

"I'm not quite sure of that, Anna; but I've never sort of felt like this about any other boy. Not that either of us have had the chance to meet boys. But there's those from the village you see now and again walking through the fields on a Sunday, in their best suits, and to my mind Bobby seems to stand out. He did, even in his pit clothes; and he's got a mind and he thinks. But ... but I'm older than him."

"Oh, yes, yes, a lot older, a year and a bit! What is he? Seventeen, and you're eighteen, just gone. "

"Don't laugh. It isn't right that age should be like that; the man should always be the older."

"Don't be silly! It's how you feel, it's got nothing to do with age.

Look at Miss Alice Simmons from Bowcrest, she who married last year.

Remember? She's thirty-four, they said, and she married a man of twenty-five. "

"Well, that lot can make laws for themselves; the higher you're up the less it matters ... " You had better not let Dada hear you talk like that; he'll ask where all your learning's gone? And I'll say this: if you like Bobby, go on liking him;

but get to know him better. And anyway, you know nothing could happen for years. "

"I know that, but I can but hope."

"Well, go on hoping, dear; it's better than no hope at all."

She turned away and onto her side and after a moment Cherry said softly, "There's someone interested in you an' all; but there's no hope at all in that quarter, and I feel sorry, I do."

"What d'you mean? What d'you mean?" Anna had turned back again and was half-sitting up in bed.

"Oh, lie down, you know what I mean. You could see the way he looked at you when he was holding your hands in Blind Man's Buff. And I think I'm not the only one that noticed. Dada isn't blind' to that kind of thing."

"Cherry! Cherry Dagshaw! Shut up! D'you hear? Don't ever dare bring that subject up again, to me or anyone else. D'you hear?" I "All right, all right. Lie down."

Anna lay down, and after a moment Cherry, with a big heave, turned on to her side, saying, "If I had my doubts before how you felt, you've dispelled them now."

Anna was for flouncing round again but she stopped herself by gripping the edge of the feather tick. She would have to leave that place; there must be no waiting.

The winter of 1881 2 had been a severe one. There were days when the roads were impassable because of the heavy falls of snow; and conditions were made even worse when the thaw set in.

She hadn't kept the promise to herself to give up her post, telling herself that the child needed her. However, she was relieved, yet at the same time sorry, whenever the weather made her visits impossible.

The severest snowstorm occurred in February. It went on for four days.

Huge drifts blocked the roads, trains were unable to run, and when eventually the thaw came the rivers overflowed their banks, flooding much of the land in and around the villages; only the moors seemed to escape. And perhaps this was as well, for in the second week of March, two pit families and a single man made their home on the moors, at least on the edge of it and as near as possible to Nathaniel's woodland fence, in order to get a little shelter from the trees.

They had been there for three days before Nathaniel and Anna, having gone down to the wood-pile to replenish the house stock, came across them; and they were aghast at hearing the sound of a child coughing its heart out under one of the tarpaulin shelters, three rough habitations that Nathaniel wouldn't have offered as shelter to his goats. The company consisted of three men, two women, and five children. One man had a fire going in a holed, square, tin box and had erected a tripod over it on which a kettle was swinging. And when Nathaniel spoke to them across the railings, saying, "Dear! Dear! This can't go on," the man said, "We ain't takin' any of your wood, mister."

"I'm not talking about wood," said Nathaniel, harshly now.

"I'm talking about the conditions under which you are living and that child coughing in there." He pointed to the tarpaulin and makeshift walls of oddments of furniture. And he said, "You only had to come and ask. You know you could have used the barn; others before you have done so."

The man came towards the fence now and the other two men and one of the women followed, and it was the first man who spoke, saying in a quiet voice, "Aye, I know that, mister. You've been very good, and you needn't have been, with what they've done to you and your lot. But we didn't want any more trouble to come on you. So we'll be all right here for the next day or two, then we'll shift. We're goin' into the town. We'll get something; if not, the workhouse will have to keep us.

But that'll be over me dead body. I'll swear on that. And we'll all see our day with that lot back there. " He thumbed over the moor in the direction of the mine.

"Livin' on the fat of the land, they are. We're turnin' out more bloody coal now than we ever have; three times as much as twenty years ago. I know me figures, mister. I know me figures. I'm a union man.

That's me trouble, I'm a union man.

The three of us here are and there's many more back there an' all. If they'd only have the bloody guts to stand up for what they think an'

come out. That's why we're here, you see. We tried to get them out.

Stand together, I said. And what happened? That bloody keeker, Praggett, put his oar in again. "

"Why is it always Praggett who seems to have the last say in the evictions?"

"Oh, well, mister, he just works to orders an' all. There's only one there who has a good word for us and that's Taunton, the engineer; but he's got to watch his step. It's been worse since Morgansen, the second owner, come up from London and put his neb in: they should get themselves bloody well down below and see what goes on in order to let them live like lords. But I suppose Morgansen's come 'cos of his lass is goin' to marry Brodrick. An' he's lordin' it an' all since his old man died. But we'll see our day with the lot of 'em. They can do nowt about it. The union's growin' and it'll swell an' swell an' suffocate the buggers, and I hope I live to see it."

Looking at the man, Anna could see just how he had talked himself out of his job: he was a box-thumper. And yet he had a cause, oh yes. But what was this about Mr. Raymond going to marry the other mine-owner's daughter? That was something new. Oh dear, what about his brother's wife? She recalled the day she listened in to his protestations of love, so what would she do now? How would she react?

She was wintering, as nurse had called it, in the South of France; and she remembered nurse adding

laughingly, "I hope she summers there an' all," to which she had mentally agreed, for the house was a different place without her personality. And except for the two weeks it had been in deep mourning for the loss of the master, Arnold Brodrick, the news of whose death had only reached them a week after he had been buried in some remote area abroad, the house had taken on a peaceful air. And she had felt herself to be accepted more and more by the staff, with one or two exceptions: the upper housemaid's manner, to say the least, was still offensive. Maybe it was because she had been bred in the village and was the blacksmith's niece.

Her father was saying in a puzzled tone, "Why won't you accept the hospitality of the barn? It is weatherproof and warm and your wives could cook in the tack room. And that child needs shelter other than that erection, if I'm to go by that racking cough."

It was one of the other men who answered this, saying, "We would like to, mister. He won't tell you' he pointed to his talkative companion

'but Praggett tells us that if any more of us are given shelter from you they can ring off the land and then you would have no way out for your horse and cart, and the only other way on foot would be through the village. And we know that you've had trouble there as well."

Nathaniel's indignation seemed to put inches on him and his voice was loud now as he cried, "They cannot enclose us, the moor is common land.

And we are bounded on two sides by Farmer Billings's land."

"Aye, well, you know, sir--' The man was nodding at him and in a quiet voice he said further, " Billings only rents the farm from the Brodricks. It's their land, you see. "

"But Mr. Brodrick would never allow it."

"Aye, you would think so, but... but Morgansen's got a bigger slice, so I understand, of the cake, and Brodrick must be out to please him, I suppose, seem' as he is goin' to join his family. Strikes me it's a business deal as much as a marriage. Anyway, that's it, sir. We didn't want to get you into a fix like that, for they say Morgansen is tougher than Brodrick."

"There are public rights of way that even all the Brodricks and Morgansens have no control over. Now, take down those ramshackle attempts at cover and get yourselves into the barn. You can have the boiler going in a short time and hot water and hot drinks for that child. How are you off for bedding?" He was looking at the women now, and one of them said, "Well, sir, not too bad, but it's a bit damp."

"Then get it over and get it dried off. Look, carry your things along to the gate there. Until the weather gets better you'll have to make journeys back to the wood-pile to keep the boiler going. There's plenty of wood, so you needn't worry about that or anything else ...

Fencing us in indeed!" He turned about now and, taking an armful of logs, he said to Anna, "Come. Did you ever hear anything like that?

What will they try to do next? "

"Well, they've said it before, Dada, and they'll likely carry out their intent, and leave us to fight it after."

"just let them try. What a pity Miss Netherton's away! She would have gone over there and blown them up. She knows the law. For two pins I'd go myself..."

"Please, Dada, don't get involved any more than you need. I'll be going over tomorrow. I'll see Mr. Simon; perhaps he will be able to do something, although, as he says, he washes his hands of the mine and all its business. He doesn't like what's going on there any more than you do. As for Mr. Timothy, I think if he had worked there he would have been the first one to go on strike."

On entering the house Nathaniel cried, "Maria! Maria! Come and hear the latest." And when Maria emerged from the kitchen saying, "What is it now?" he told her, and she listened in silence as she stood drying her hands. Then she asked quietly, "What if they have the authority?"

"They haven't the authority to take in common land, moorland."

"But it must belong to somebody. They just haven't bothered to rail it in before now."

Nathaniel looked from Maria to Anna; then going to a chair, he dropped down onto it, and again remarked, "I do wish Miss Netherton was here.

I know nothing about law. I've been stupid enough all my life to deal in folklore and fairy tales, never getting down to the basics. I'm an idiot, a pleasant idiot, that's what I am. "

"Yes. Yes, of course you are, dear." They were standing one at each side of him now, and Maria, stroking his hair back from his forehead, added, "I've known that for a long time and I've wondered how I've put up with it." Then Anna laughed and Nathaniel looked at her and said,

"She means that. Under that pleasantry she means that."