From the Ridge you could see right out across Cheshire—on a clear day, to the mountains. At night, the lights of Manchester, Stockport and Hyde were sprinkled over the north-western plain, seemed sometimes to quiver and move in the tremendous cataract of air pouring over the hills. And when there had been a snowfall, Kinder Scout looked awful and lonely with black outcrops of rock, under a bare sky. One year the Downfall had frozen to an enormous icicle, reflecting the red sun. Stone walls criss-crossed the wild, bleak country spreading towards Macclesfield Forest and the Peak. Maurice had become an expert on ordnance maps, and though he seldom walked further than he could help, he reeled off, within a few months of coming to Gatesley, names which Eric had never heard, fascinating him: Hoo Moor, Flash, Stoop, Adder’s Green. At the top of the Ridge it was always cool; though Cheshire lay trembling in haze. Eric got off his bicycle for a few moments, liking to stand there, feeling on one hand the lonely country of cart-roads, broken sign-posts, stone farms and walls, on the other the solemn wilderness of tram-lines and brick and the tall mills scribbling the sky with their smoke.

Then he sprang on to the saddle and rode on, past the quarry, where you could get white heather; past another farm; beginning to apply the brakes as the hill got steeper: suddenly turning a corner, Gatesley lay below him.

And now he was at the edge of Gatesley Brow. It dipped very steeply, trees arching across, the Buxton road running through the village at the bottom—so that, if you weren’t careful, you got cut in half as you reached the foot of the Brow, by a car travelling at full speed.

In a minute I shall see them, he thought.

In a minute I shall see them, he repeated to himself, getting off his bicycle, standing still. He often teased himself thus, letting his pleasure at the coming meeting sharpen, by a few moments’ delay, into absolute bliss.

He walked slowly downhill, wheeling his bicycle, until he came within a dozen paces of the gate of their house.

He could see the whole of the little garden, and they were all on the lawn. Gerald and Tommy Ramsbotham were there, and Edward Blake and Maurice and Anne. They were knocking a hockey ball about, not taking sides but tackling whoever had the ball. Edward Blake was in his shirt-sleeves and rather out of breath. Maurice, who loved, whenever possible, to dress up in some way or other, was wearing an extraordinary old straw hat, much too big for him, on the back of his head.

And now Aunt Mary had come out of the sitting-room, with Ramsbotham, through the French windows. She smoked and watched them, smiling, a bundle of papers in her hand. Edward Blake saluted her with his hockey-stick. Maurice, skipping about in the sunshine, got the ball and drove it with all his might into the fence at the back of the garden. His delighted scream of “Oh, God!” echoed down the Brow. Anne called out: “Idiot!”