They were waiting for him as he dropped into the ditch.

He saw from their faces that they expected only bad news; any news was bad that was not signalled by the gate to the valley thrown open, and an immediate beckoning in.

'How'd it go, Mr Custance?' Noah Blennitt asked.

'Not well.' He told them, baldy, but passing quickly over the invitation to his own family to come in. When he had finished, Roger said:

'I can see their point of view. He can make room for you and Arm and the children?'

'He can't do anything. The others had agreed about that, and apparently they're willing to stick by it.'

'You take it, Johnny,' Roger said. 'You've brought us up here - we haven't lost anything by it, and there's no sense in everyone missing the chance because we can't all have it.'

The murmur from the others was uncertain enough to be tempting. It's been offered, he thought, and they won't stop me if I take it straight away while they're still shocked by their own generosity. Take Arm and Mary and Davey up to the gates, and see them open, and the valley beyond . . . He looked at Pirrie. Pirrie returned the look calmly; his small right hand, the fingers still carefully manicured, rested on the butt of his rifle.

Seeing the bubble of temptation pricked, he wondered how he would have reacted if he had had the real rather than the apparent freedom of action. The feudal baron, he thought, and ready to sell out his followers as cheerfully as that. Probably they had been like that - most of them, anyway.

He said, looking at Pirrie: 'I've been thinking it over.

Quite frankly, I don't think there's any hope at all of my brother persuading the others to let us all in. As he said, some of them have seen their own relations turned back. That leaves us two alternatives: turning back ourselves and looking for a home somewhere else, or fight