Mary quietened him as well as she could with promises. They had not passed a farm or a shepherd’s cabin for miles. She could see no hope of any building ahead short of the Wolfpits valley, not even as much as would shelter them for the night if they lost their way or if the strength of the weakest failed. They were wandering on and on, blindly, as it seemed, into a desert of high, poor pastures. Now they no longer saw large flocks of sheep. Those that they startled were solitary creatures that sprang up in alarm from the wayside tangles of furze and brier, horned mountain sheep, with shaggy fleeces and black faces.
She felt that the light was failing. Perhaps the sun had set. Surely it had set, for they had walked endlessly. At sunset the birds began their song in the thickets about Wolfpits, but here there was no shelter for birds. Only the wheat-ears bobbed their white rumps in front of them and the meadow-pipits flew before them in their endless game of waiting and of flight, so tame that Morgan ran to catch one with his hands. Out of the whiteness above them they heard the lost bubbling voices of curlews, or the harsh cawing of the carrion crow.
She dragged on behind, and Abner walked ahead, never tiring. She would have died rather than have complained, as long as he made no complaint. A stone cottage rose up out of the mist.
‘Now you shall have your drink,’ she cried encouragingly to Morgan. The sight brightened her, for she was parched dry herself. But the cottage was only a ruin with a broken gate on either side of it that had made a walled enclosure for sheep. Not very long ago sheep had been penned there, for torn fleece had stuck to the splinters of the gates and the road was strewn with dry dung. Abner went up to the door to see if by any chance they were mistaken; but the place was quite deserted.
‘Let’s sit down a bit,’ he said, and lit his pipe. She sat down wearily beside him. Morgan, smelling round the garden like a puppy, came back with a bunch of wallflowers and gave them to her. Their scent was a poor substitute for food, but she kissed his cold face.
‘I want a drink of water, mam,’ he said again.
She looked desperately at Abner.
‘Wait till we come on a bottle of pop, son,’ he said. Morgan stared at him with big eyes. ‘Real pop?’ he asked.
‘You wait and see,’ said Abner cheerfully.
Gladys, who had just begun to cry quietly in his arms, said that she was cold.