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Stephen’s laughter became rather shocked and awed when he walked about the house, looking at things and realizing he might never come back there. He wouldn’t waste time going into the village to post the letter to the council. Might as well leave it with the notes for Lyn and Dadda. What should he take with him? A change of clothes, of course, and a blanket for the night. There was food enough in the cavern. Later on, say on Monday after Peter had gone back, it would be his turn to stock up with food and drink. A sleeping bag would have to be bought and a mattress for himself. He would make the cavern welcoming and homelike for Peter’s return …

The last he saw of Tace Way was the pram on the bright green square of the Simpsons’ lawn and the last he heard was the urgent crying of Joanne’s baby. I am shaking the dust of this place off my feet, he said to himself, shaking it off my feet. The expression pleased him and for a while he walked in a prancing way, shaking his feet as he lifted them, repeating what he had said, and then, as he crossed the Jackley road, lifting up his eyes to the hills.

His rucksack, containing the rope, the big torch, candles, clothes, was on his back. Under his right arm he carried a blanket, rolled up and tied with string. He had decided to grow a beard like Peter’s; he had shaved for the last time. There was no one following him, he was as alone as he had ever been when out on the moor. Behind him a car passed along the road, going towards Jackley, then after a moment or two another heading for Hilderbridge, but Vangmoor itself where there were no roads was stripped of people. It was empty and silent and now at the end of summer no birds sang.

In the Vale of Allen there was here and there a golden flower on the gorse. It was a curious thing about gorse that although the season of its flowering was springtime, there was always blossom on it even in the depths of winter, even if it were just one solitary bloom. He should have written about that for the Echo but it was too late now. He didn’t think he would ever again write the ‘Voice of Vangmoor’. Someone else would have to take over, for he, though not far away, would nevertheless be removed from such activities. Pleased with the idea, he understood he was making himself into an outlaw, a modern Robin Hood. He and Rip together would be a kind of robber band, though it was not robbery they would come out of the hills to commit.

The mist which enclosed the moor, which almost since sunrise had been shot with gold, should have lifted by now, but instead it seemed to be closing in, growing colder, whiter and more autumnal. He could see the foin only as a vague blurred shape, rising out of the flat land ahead. The coe and the windlass were invisible, and when they did appear it was to loom up like men advancing.

He fastened the rope to the lip of rock and clambered down Apsley Sough. The sides of the shaft were moist and slippery but not running with water and there was no water lying in the chamber at its foot. Stephen felt relief. There had been times in the past days when he feared a flooding of the mine.

All the rain seemed to have done was intensify the sour chemical smell. He made his way along the winze, wondering if Rip were here already and if the sound of his footfalls might be audible to him through the rock walls. The atmosphere felt colder than usual, laying a thick chilly breath on his skin. His throat tightened with excitement but he walked slowly, he walked with measured tread, to give Rip a chance to know that he approached.

The end of the winze, where it opened out into the doorway to the chamber, he saw as he rounded the slight bend in the passage, was in darkness. If Rip had come he was there no longer. Unless he sat waiting in the dark. Stephen remembered that Rip didn’t know he was called Rip, that was only his own secret name for him, and he called in a loud clear voice, ‘Peter! Peter, it’s Stephen!’

There was no answer. He hadn’t come yet. Stephen had a sudden feeling that Rip might have been alarmed by the discovery of the third girl’s hair and have emptied the cavern for safety’s sake. He didn’t know, couldn’t then have known, the identity of Harriet Crozier’s killer. Stephen raised the torch. The light leapt across the rocky walls and showed him everything as it had been before, the boxes, the bottle of cider, the clothes, the bedding, the candles in the bottles and the candle in the candlestick.

Being in the cavern, the cavern as he had always known it, made him feel happy again. He sat down on the mattress, unrolled his blanket and lit all the candles. Like someone who, though long intimate with a friend’s house, has always been a visitor, he had now taken a room there himself or moved in to share and might take liberties that were previously forbidden. He lit the calor gas burner. The kettle, he found, had been filled with water. It would take a long time to boil but eventually he would get himself a cup of tea. Into the box where the tins were and the biscuits Rip had put two packets of cigarettes, and Stephen seemed to smell again the scent of tobacco that had come to him as he opened the gate on Foinmen’s Plain.

The gas burner gave a little welcome warmth. Stephen ate biscuits while the kettle boiled. There was only dried milk for the tea but he didn’t mind. Doing without, making do, added to the fun of picnics. He saw before him a vista of future picnics with Rip, hard-won tea, the sweeter because it took so long to brew, biscuits softened with keeping, meat dug out of a tin. He had slept badly the night before, after he had buried Tace. He lay down on the mattress and covered himself with the blanket and fell asleep.

When he awoke his watch told him it was the middle of the afternoon. In the mine all times and all seasons were the same and the silence was the same. He sat up, feeling stiff and rather cold and listened to the silence. The candles had burnt down a long way but there was still a new one in the candlestick and he had brought four spares with him. He lit the new candle and that made him look at the candlestick and fancy he recognized it. In his own home surely when he was a small child? Or in the gatehouse lodge — yes, that was more likely. It must have been Helena’s, passed on to Leonard, then to Peter. It gleamed like gold in the dimness of the chamber.

It was after four. Surely Rip would come before dark, surely he wouldn’t wait till nightfall? To pass the time he undid the flaps on top of the secret box. He was almost certain the three hanks of hair lay exactly as he had left them. Did that mean Rip hadn’t looked in the box since then, that he didn’t know the third girl’s hair was in there? What times he and Rip would have together! Sharing this place, hidden here, descending sometimes from their mountain fastness like wolves on the fold. He closed his eyes and saw them as wolves, grey, shaggy, powerful and fleet of foot, a victim held between white and red jaws. The first victim perhaps should be Stella Crane who could easily be lured from her sanctuary in Loomlade.

He laughed at the thought, though by now his teeth were chattering. His watch showed five and he got up and walked about, rubbing his hands and stamping his feet. It seemed to be growing colder all the time but he didn’t want to light the burner again and use up all the gas in the canister. They would need it for tea in the morning. He decided to go for a walk, take some exercise. That was another thought to make him laugh, the notion of taking exercise down here in the bowels of the earth. He walked back along the winze and when he came to the fork continued a little way along to where the bad air began. And there he saw he had been wrong about the unlikelihood of flooding in the mine. Here the floor of the passage which had always been wet was lying under water. The level of water in the lake called the Bottomless Pit had risen up the walls of the cavern it filled and the water was spreading out to cut off the passage. Stephen shone his torch up ahead and whistled at what he saw. It was impossible to tell exactly how deep the water was but it had come so high as to leave a gap of only a foot or so between its ruffled black surface and the coffin-curved roof of the winze.