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.
‘Salmon right enough!’ said Mick, leaning on the parapet. ‘The times I’ve watched them coming up the river Barrow, before you was the height of a match!’
They left the roofs of Lesswardine on their right, turning in towards the bare hills. The river swept away from them to cut the village in two. From a perpendicular tower of reddish stone they heard a lazy peal of bells.
‘Sunday morning,’ said Mick. ‘God help us!’
From all that sun-drenched, silent countryside, from the towers of many hidden villages other bells were heard, melancholy, mellow voices, floating luxuriously in an air lightened by rain.
‘By the houly!’ Mick continued, ‘and the pubs shut on me! If it isn’t enough to make a man make dead childer!’