tation to look to an armed band for help. Near the ruins of Sedbergh they saw a group, of about the same number as their own, emerging from the town. The women were wearing what looked like expensive jewellery, and one of the men was carrying pieces of gold plate. Even while John watched, he threw some of it away as being too heavy. Another man picked it up, weighed it in his hand, and dropped it again with a laugh. They went on, keeping to the east of John's band, and the gold remained, gleaming dully against the brown grassless earth.

From an isolated farm-house, as they struck up towards the valley of the Lune, they heard a screaming, I high-pitched and continuous, that unsettled the children and some of the women. There were two or three men lounging outside the farm-house with guns. John led his band past, and the screams faded into the distance.

The Blennitts' perambulator had been abandoned when they left the road on the outskirts of Sedbergh, and their belongings distributed among the six adults in awkward bundles. The going was clearly harder for them than for any of the others, and they made no secret of their relief when John called a halt for the day, high up in the Lune valley, on the edge of the moors. (

The rain had not returned; the clouds had thinned into cirrus, threading the sky at a considerable height. Above the high curves of the moors to westward, the threads were lit from behind by the evening sun. (

'We'll tackle the moors in the morning,' John said.

'By my reckoning, we aren't much more than twenty—

five miles from the valley now, but the going won't be very easy. Still, I hope we can make it by tomorrow night. For tonight' - he gestured towards a house with shattered windows that stood on a minor elevation above them - ' . . . that looks like a promising billet.

Pirrie, take a couple of men and reconnoitre it, will you?'

|