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same thing might happen there. Dorset was too small a county for lightning to strike twice.
    A bright moon allowed the slow-moving convoy to negotiate the narrow lane across the valley without headlights. As the six buses neared the entrance to the Copse, they drew onto the side of the road and killed their engines, waiting for one of their party to explore the access track for pitfalls. The ground was frozen to a depth of two feet from the bitter east wind that had been blowing for days, with another hard frost promised for the morning. There was absolute silence as a torch beam flickered from side to side, showing the width of the track and the crescent-shaped clearing at the entrance to the wood that was large enough to accommodate vehicles.
    On another, warmer, night the ramshackle convoy would have become bogged down in the soft, damp clay of the track before it reached the relative safety of the root-toughened woodland floor. But not on this night. With careful marshaling, as precisely dictated as aircraft movements on a carrier, the six vehicles followed the gesturing torch beam and parked in a rough semicircle under the skeletal branches of the outer trees. The torchbearer had a few minutes' conversation with each driver before windows were obscured with cardboard and the occupants retired for the night.
    Although unaware of it, Shenstead Village had had its resident population more than doubled in under an hour. Its disadvantage was its situation in a remote valley that cut through the Dorset Ridgeway to the sea. Of its fifteen houses, eleven were holiday homes, owned by either rental businesses or distant city dwellers, while the four that remained in full-time occupation contained just ten people, three of whom were children. Estate agents continued to describe it as an "unspoiled gem" whenever the holiday homes came up for sale at exorbitant prices, but the truth was very different. Once a thriving community of fisherfolk and workers of the land, it was now the casual resting place of strangers who had no interest in fighting a turf war.
    And what could the full-time residents have done if they had realized their way of life was about to be threatened? Called the police and admit the land had no owner?
    Dick Weldon, half a mile to the west of the village, had made a halfhearted attempt to enclose the acre strip of woodland three years earlier when he bought Shenstead Farm, but his fence had never remained intact for more than a week. At the time he had blamed the Lockyer-Foxes and their tenants for the broken rails as theirs was the only other property with a competing claim, but it soon became apparent that no one in Shenstead was ready to let a Johnny-come-lately increase the value of his property for the cost of some cheap wooden posts.
    It was well known that it took twelve years of uninterrupted usage to claim a piece of wasteland in law, and even the weekenders had no intention of surrendering their dog-walking territory so tamely. With planning permission for a house the site would be worth a small fortune, and there was little doubt in anyone's mind, despite Dick's protest to the contrary, that that was his goal. What other use was woodland to an arable farmer unless he felled the trees and plowed the land? Either way, the Copse would fall to the ax.
    Weldon had argued that it must have belonged to Shenstead Farm at some point because it cut a U-shaped loop into his curtilage with only a meager hundred yards bordering the Lockyer-Foxes at the Manor. Privately most people agreed with him, but without the documents to prove it-almost certainly a careless oversight by a solicitor in the past-and with no guarantee of success, there seemed little point in arguing the case in court. The legal costs could amount to more than the land was worth, even with planning permission, and Weldon was too much of a realist to risk it. As ever in Shenstead, the issue died through apathy, and the "common land" status of the