aren't going to be many safe refuges in England. But this can be one of them.'

'Hence the potatoes and beet,' John observed.

David said: 'And more.' He looked at them. 'Did you see that stack of timber by the road, just this side of the gap?'

'New buildings?'

David stood up and walked across to look out of the window at the wintry landscape. Still looking out, he said: 'No. Not buildings. A stockade.'

Arm and John looked at each other. Arm repeated: 'A stockade?'

David swung round. 'A fence, if you like. There's going to be a gate on this valley - a gate that can be held by a few against a mob.'

'Are you serious?' John asked him.

He watched this elder brother who had always been so much less adventurous, less imaginative, than himself.

His manner nov/ was as stolid and unexcited as ever; he hardly seemed concerned about the implications of what he had just said.

'Quite serious,' David said.

Arm protested: 'But if things turn out all right, after all...'

'The countryside,' David said, 'is always happy to have something to laugh at. Custance's Folly. I'm taking a chance on looking a fool. I've got an uneasiness in my bones, and I'm concerned with quietening it. Being a laughing-stock doesn't count beside that.'

His quiet earnestness impressed them; they were conscious - Arm particularly - of an impulse to do as he had urged them: to join him here in the valley and fasten the gate on the jostling uncertain world outside.

But the impulse could only be brief; there was all the business of life to remember. Arm said involuntarily: 'The children's schools...'