As they passed, in silence, John thought how natural it would have been, a few days before, to give some kind of greeting, and how unnatural the same greeting would have sounded now.

Roger said quietly: 'How far do you think they'll get?'

'Down into Wensleydale, possibly. I don't know. They may survive a week, if they're lucky.'

'Lucky? Or unlucky?'

'Yes. Unlucky, I suppose.'

Pirrie said: 'They appear to be turning back.'

John looked. They had travelled perhaps seventy-five yards farther on along the road; now they had turned and were making their way back, still pushing the perambulators. By turning, they had got the rain in their faces instead of on their backs. The little girl's mackintosh gaped at the neck; her fingers fumbled, trying to fasten it, but she could not.

They stopped a short distance away. The older man said:

'We wondered if you was waiting for anything up here - if there was anything we could tell you, maybe.'

John's eyes examined him. A manual worker of some kind; the sort of man who would give a lifetime's faithful inefficient service. On his own, under the new conditions, he would have small chance of survival, his only hope lying in the possibility of attaching himself to some little Napoleonic gangster of the dales wlio would put up with his uselessness for the sake of his devotion. With his present entourage, even that was ruled out.

'No,' John said. 'There's nothing you can tell us.*

'We was heading across the Pennines,' the man went on. 'We reckoned it might be quieter over in those parts.

We thought we might find a farm or something, out of the way, where they'd let us work and give us some food. We wouldn't want much.'

A few months ago, the pipe-dream had probably been a £75, win on the football pools. Their chances of