Anyhow, what they'd done now, to save a lot of bother and pestering was to take down all the ropes. Except, of course the one that rang the seventh bell.

Some nights, Jack would be real knackered after a day's dipping, or shearing, or lambing. He'd stagger up them steps, hurting all over his body, dying for a pint and aching for his bed. Some nights he'd grab hold of that rope just to stop himself falling over.

Still the hundred would be done. And done on time.

And it was on nights like this that Jack felt sometimes he was helped. Felt the belfry was kind of aglow, and other hands were pulling on the rope beside his own.

Spooky?

Well, he didn't think about it. Where was the point in that?

They walked slowly into the town over a river bridge with old brick walls which badly needed pointing, the river flat and sullen below. Past a pub, the Cock, with flaky paintwork and walls that had once been whitewashed but now looked grey and unwashed.

A dark, smoky, secretive little town. There was still an afterglow on the fields, but the town was already embracing the night.

Mr. Kettle had never been to Paris or New York. But if, tonight, he was to be flown into either of them, he suspected he wouldn't feel any more of a stranger than he did entering Crybbe – a town he'd lived within twenty miles of all his life.

This town, it wasn't remote exactly, not difficult to reach, yet it was isolated. Outsiders never had reason to pass through it on the way to anywhere. Because, no matter where you wanted to reach, there was always a better way to get there than via Crybbe. Three roads intersected here, but they were B roads, two starting in Wales – one leading eventually to Hereford, the other to Ludlow – and the other… well, buggered if he knew where that one went.