Well, I’ve something to show you. Look at these.”

She opened one of the cupboards in the dresser, and pointed to a line of empty bottles.

“What Mr. Rice calls ‘dead men.’ Many’s the bottle of gin or stout he’s brought back from the Bull.”

“He’s kind,” admitted Helen. “There’s something aoout him. Pity he’s such a rotter.”,

“He’s not as black as he’s painted,” said Mrs. Oates.

“He was sent down from his school in Oxford for mucking about with a girl. But he told me, one night, as he was more sinned against than sinning. He’s not really partial to girls.”

“But he flirts with Mrs. Newton.”

“Just his fun. When she says ‘A,’ he says ‘B.’ That’s all.”

Helen laughed as she looked into the glowing heart of the fire. Unknown to her, fresh cracks had been started in the walls of her fortress. As she stroked the ginger cat, who responded with a startling rumble, her recent experience seemed very remote.

“I promised you a tale,” she said. “Well—‘believe me or believe me not’ -when I was coming through the plantation, I met—the strangler.”

It was certain that she did not believe her own story, although she exaggerated the details, in order to impress Mrs. Oates. It was such—a thin-spun theme—a man hiding behind a tree, with no sequel to prove a dark motive.

She was not the only one to be incredulous. In a cottage halfway up the hillside, a dark-eyed girl was looking at herself in a, small mirror, spotted with damp. Her face was rosy from moist mountain air, and her expression was eager and rebellious.

Here was one who welcomed life with both hands. She perched a scarlet hand-knitted beret at a perilous angle on her short black hair, powdered her cheeks, and added unnecessary lipstick to her moist red lips, humming, as an accompaniment to her actions.

As she looked around the small room, with the low bulging white plaster ceiling and cracked walls, ‘the limp muslin curtain before the shuttered window, her desire grew.. She told herself that she was sick of confinement and the cheesy smell of indoors. She had stayed in, night after night, until she was fed up, and willing to chance any hypothetical criminal. She yearned for the cheery bar of the Bull, with a young man or two, a glass of cider, and the magic of the Wireless.

She buttoned up her red leather coat and put on Wellington boots, before her stealthy descent down the creaking stairs. When she slipped through the cottage door her heart beat faster, but only with excitement. She was as used to the narrow, pitchy lane, which dropped down precipitously to the valley, as a Londoner is to Piccadilly. Familiarity with loneliness had robbed it of any terror, just as immunity from attack had resulted in perfect nerve. Without fear or foreboding, she hurried down the stony hillside, in sure-footed haste.

When she reached the plantation, she felt that she had nearly reached the goal of her desire. A bare mile of level ground separated her from the bar of the Bull. Civilization was represented by the Summit, which was so close to her that she could hear a broadcast of Jack Hylton’s band.

Like most Welsh girls, she had a true ear and a musical voice. She took up the tune, jumbling the words, but singing with the passionate exaltation due to a revivalist hymn.

“Love is the sweetest thing. No bird upon the wing”

The rain drove down upon her face, in steady slanting skeins, through the partial screen, of the larches, and the hard ground under her feet, was growing slimed, in spite of its carpet of spines. Happy, healthy, and unwise, she hurried to meet the future.