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the last a glorious detonation that must have been at least a quarter of a mile down the valley.
    ‘There!’ said Denny in a suppressed voice, as though all the secret bitterness of his life escaped into that single word. ‘That’s the end of one bit of rottenness!’
    He had barely spoken before the commotion broke. Doors and windows were flung open, shedding light upon the darkened roadway. People ran out of their houses. In a minute the street was thronged. At first the cry went up that it was an explosion at the mine. But this was quickly contradicted – the sounds had come from down the valley. Arguments arose and shouted speculations. A party of men set out with lanterns to explore. The hubbub and confusion made the night ring. Under cover of the darkness and the noise, Denny and Manson started to dodge home by the back ways. There was a singing triumph in Andrew’s blood.
    Before eight o’clock next morning Doctor Griffiths arrived upon the scene by car, fat, veal faced and verging upon panic, summoned from his warm bed with much blasphemy by Councillor Glyn Morgan. Griffiths might refuse to answer the calls of the local doctors but there was no denying the angry command of Glyn Morgan. And, indeed, Glyn Morgan had cause for anger. The Councillor’s new villa half a mile down the valley had, overnight, become surrounded by a moat of more than mediaeval squalor. For half an hour the Councillor, supported by his adherents, Hamar Davies and Deawn Roberts, told their medical officer, in voices audible to many, exactly what they thought of him.
    At the end of it, wiping his forehead, Griffiths tottered over to Denny who, with Manson, stood amongst the interested and edified crowd. Andrew had a sudden qualm at the approach of the health officer. A troubled night had left him less elated. In the cold light of morning, abashed by the havoc of the torn-up road, he was again uncomfortable, nervously perturbed. But Griffiths was in no condition to be suspicious.
    ‘Man, man,’ he quavered to Philip. ‘We’ll have to get that new sewer for you straight off now.’
    Denny’s face remained expressionless.
    ‘I warned you about that months ago,’ he said frigidly. ‘Don’t you remember?’
    ‘Yes, yes, indeed! But how was I to guess the wretched thing would blow up this way. It’s a mystery to me how it all happened.’
    Denny looked at him coolly.
    ‘Where’s your knowledge of public health, doctor? Don’t you know these sewer gases are highly inflammable.’
    The construction of the new sewer was begun on the following Monday.

Chapter Five
    It was three months later and a fine March afternoon. The promise of spring scented the soft breeze blowing across the mountains where vague streaks of green defied the dominating heaped and quarried ugliness. Under the crisp blue sky even Drineffy was beautiful.
    As he went out to pay a call, which had just come in, at 3 Riskin Street, Andrew felt his heart quicken to the day. Gradually he was becoming acclimatised to this strange town, primitive and isolated, entombed by the mountains, and no places of amusement, not even a cinema, nothing but its grim mine, its quarries and ore-works, its string of chapels and bleak rows of houses, a queer and silently contained community.
    And the people, they also were strange, yet Andrew, though he saw them so alien to himself, could not but feel stirrings of affection towards them. With the exception of the tradesfolk, the preachers and a few professional people, they were all directly in employment to the Company. At the end and beginning of each shift the quiet streets would suddenly awake, re-echoing to steel-shod footfalls, unexpectedly alive with an army of marching figures. The clothing, boots, hands, even the faces of those from the hematite mine bore bright red powdering of ore dust. The quarry-men wore moleskins with pads and gartered knees. The puddlers were conspicuous in their trousers of blue twill.
    They spoke little