I've always told them that you and your family must come in if you got here. But thirty-four . . . I It's impossible.

Even if I agreed, the others would never let me.'

'It's your land.'

'No one holds land except by consent. They are in the majority. Johnny - I know you don't like the idea of abandoning the people you've been travelling with. But you will have to. There's no alternative.'

There's always an alternative.'

'None. Bring them here - Arm and the children - you can make some excuse for that. The others . . . they've got arms, haven't they? They'll manage all right.'

'You've not been out there.'

Their eyes met again. David said. 'I know you won't like doing it, but you must. You can't put the safety of those others before Arm and the children.'

John laughed. The two men on the platform looked down at them.

'Pirrie!' lie said. 'He must be psychic.'

'Pirrie?'

'One of my lot. I don't think we should have got through without him. I was going to bring Arm and the children with me when I came to meet you. He put a stop to it. He made them stay behind. I saw that he was protecting himself and the others against a double-cross, and I was righteously indignant. Now ... if I did have them here, inside the fence, I wonder what I would have done?'

David said: 'This is serious. Can't you fool him somehow?'

Tool him? Not Pirrie.' John looked away, up the long vista of Blind Gill, snug beneath its protecting hills. He said slowly: 'If you turn those others down, you're turning us down - you're turning Davey down.'

'This man, Pirrie... I might persuade them to let one other in with you. Can he be bribed?'