A coal-cart was coming downhill, clanking in the rain. Field started upwards, past the big but weary-looking drapers and clothing shops, the post-office, into the little marketplace of forlorn space, where Sam Black was peering out of the door of the “Sun,” that called itself an inn, not a pub, and where the commercial travellers stayed, and was bowing to Lady Chatterley’s car.

The church was away to the left, among black trees. The car slid on downhill, past the Miners’ Arms. It had already passed the Wellington, the Nelson, the Three Tunns and the Sun, now it passed the Miners’ Arms, then the Mechanics’ Hall, then the new and almost gaudy Miners’ Welfare and so, past a few new “villas,” out into the blackened road between dark hedges and dark green fields, towards Stacks Gate.