Darkness came at last and he stood up thankfully, cramped and cold. He had been sweating when he started his escape and the crawl had been hard work. Now the night wind cut through his sweat-drenched clothes and he shivered. Glancing back, all he could see was a light shining in the kitchen window of Fellcock. High Garth was in total darkness and he could not even make out the black bulk of the house. Not that he wanted to see it, he hated the house anyway. An idea flashed across his mind: he could fire the place, the old house and its old furniture would burn like a bonfire, and even if the valley fire brigade came up, there was no pressure of water for their hoses. It was an idea he had often toyed with: “Burn the bloody place. I’d like to see that bum.” But caution prevailed again. He’d done pretty well so far, he was as good as clear. He had come over the fell by devious routes that afternoon, to “have a look see,” to consider getting into the house and setting fire to it. It was generally solitary enough, he knew that, apart from the chap who came to fodder the beasts in the shippon. But today it had not been solitary. He had seen Mr. Brough walk across from Fellcock, and had not worried. The old farmer often came up to look at his beasts: he never bothered about the house. Mr. Brough had been followed by the blighter from Fellcock. The fugitive had heard about Macdonald’s purchase of that property and had not liked what he had heard. This afternoon the fugitive had seen the two men approach the kitchen door and then unlock and unbar it and go inside, and fear had taken hold of him, for he knew what they would find there. With knees shaking and heart pounding he had fallen flat on his face, crouching in a terror which robbed his limbs of strength, his mind of the power to think. He had lain there and then, at long last, lifted his head because he had to see, something impelled him to look. It was a mistake and he knew it, but panic had possessed him. Then he crawled away, back behind Fellcock, and only then had he stood up, to get away more quickly. He’d been a fool, and he knew it, but it hadn’t turned out so badly. He was all right now, no one could ever catch him on the fell side in the dark. With the kindly darkness all around him, he swung his arms to get the circulation going, and then, half crouching, he set about the climb to the final ridge; it was stiff going. He paused at times to get his breath—and to listen; but there was no sound save the night wind, and he felt better now that exercise had subdued the rigor of cold which had unmanned him. A chilled man shivers, a frightened man shivers, and the fugitive knew from experience that the rigor of cold can pass all too easily into the rigor of fear. With bent knees and hunched shoulders he made his way up the ridge—it was steep, but the effort warmed him. He had put about a mile between himself and the two farmsteads, and he had about four miles to go to carry out his plan, and plenty of time to do it. Remembering that there was another crevice ahead, he promised himself a cigarette. He could lie flat and conceal the flicker of a match with his own solid body. There was no one nearer to him than the folk in the farmhouse below, he knew that because he had listened, ear to the ground, for following footsteps.
Finding his sheltering crevice, he crouched in it and lighted a cigarette. Still with his face to the ground, his cupped hands concealing the tiny glow of his fag, he drew the comforting tobacco smoke into his lungs; it was better than food. Now that he was warm and had had a smoke, he felt his own man again, something quite different from the shivering terror-stricken fugitive of an hour ago. Things were in his own hands now, he told himself. He knew just what he was going to do and how he was going to do it. Only a short way ahead, on the top of the next rise, he would be able to see where he was going.
He got to his feet again and strode up the slope: at the top he gave a gasp of satisfaction. That was it, way down there, and it was fine to see lights and signs of life again after the blanketing darkness and loneliness of the fell side. He was looking down on the pipe-line encampment and he knew each of the blocks from which the lights shone out. The men’s common room, the small canteen. All the chaps would be snug down there, listening to the radio, watching TV, playing cards, reading papers, enjoying a cup of char in the small canteen. He picked out the windows of the manager’s office and he knew that some of the smaller windows were the men’s sleeping quarters. To the right of the main buildings, he knew, was an open space, concreted, where the lorries were parked. Even as he watched, he
