The Black Diamond

The inn seemed a lonely and neglected place, for the road on which it was situate had fallen into disuse. Abner, however, was glad of a rest, and sat on smoking and drinking bee...

He laughed at her and, in the end, persuaded her. By this time Morgan, awake and refreshed, was again clamouring for food. In the post-office at Redlake they bought him a packet...

He dropped his hand and walked straight out of the room. Left alone, she was overborne with shame for what she had done, and cried for her lost dignity. Never in her life had sh...

Abner saw nothing strange or pointed in the omission, and indeed he had no time to spare for ceremonies of this kind, having been bred in a country where feudal customs had long...

He shivered. For some reason his newly-pressed clothes hung loose and damp upon him. He must have lost flesh. Of course he had lost flesh. Who wouldn’t after fourteen months in...

He waited for her, and in another moment they had crossed the road under the shadow of the poplar. From that point she could see the roof of the cottage where the evangelist was...

This curious insulation, the way in which light blinded their pickets of alarm, was the great danger of salmon-spearing. The glare in the tree-tops would always give them away i...

In the second half Abner worked as he had never worked before. The Mawne team was tiring; play grew scrappy and spiteful; but though the Albion players could do what they liked...

‘You ought to have known the name that chap has with women. There’s Mr Hind’s daughter over at the Pound House; there’s George Malpas’s wife, not counting those that was never f...

For a second John Fellow’s stared at him stupidly. Then he burst out with: ‘And here’s that bloody dog again! Your mother’s told you she can’t a-bear it, but she’s no sooner ups...

Marion went to Cheltenham when her sister Ethel was a baby two years old. She made many friends, for she was good at games and a creature of unusual spirit; but the principal fe...

‘You’ll be two bob short this week,’ he said, ‘but if any one knows how to manage, you do. After that I reckon things’ll begin to look up a bit.’

Mrs Moseley feebly protested that it wasn’t her fault that the Wades had been told even now. ‘I don’t want to be a trouble to people,’ she said. Mrs Wade assured her that she wa...

Mick Connor, having kicked as many drinks out of his neighbours as they would give him, staggered over to Abner’s side. In this state he looked more than ever like a bird. His s...

Abner, mildly exalted, walked out into the moonlit street. At the cottage doors and down by the bridge little groups of men in breeches and leggings stood talking together with...

‘That young Fellows,’ said Bastard, ‘he’s not been nigh the place for more nor a week. For myself I’d say that he looks a quiet chap, but you never know . . . upon my word you d...

That night she heard the gang from the pipe-track discussing the accident at Bron, winking at each other over the way in which the story had come out. They laughed without conde...

Alice was left alone in the crowd outside clutching the baby nervously in her arms. She could not have borne to see Abner fight. All she could do was to wait patiently outside a...

That misty moon was no negligible portent, for at sunset great clouds began to gather from the south, and, before night, fell a thunder shower that drenched them. The dusty road...

Fair or foul, the work of the pipe-track never slackened, and Mary was kept busy scraping the caked mud from Abner’s clothes. The rain ceased and the floods fell. There followed...

‘Now, gentlemen,’ he said at last, ‘you have heard this . . . er . . . very distressing evidence. In this type of case—and I am glad to say they are rare in the district—it is u...

In the end she consented to his staying—happily for herself since otherwise life would have been almost impossible. During the three weeks that passed before George’s trial, the...

He did not sleep for long. His watch had stopped, and he could not tell the time, but from the height of the sun he judged it to be between eight and nine o’clock. The grass of...

She had plenty of opportunities for showing her hatred. Abner was now fifteen. His schooling was finished, and he had begun to work at the colliery, leading the ponies that drag...

Within a mile of Chapel Green the character of the country changed. Before that only a hint of mountainous severity had been visible in the stone buildings of the village with t...

The only force that tended to drag him out of this centripetal existence was Susie. Whatever her father might think of Abner, and however little he might come to the Pound House...

He devoted his evening to the children. Their frolic in the snow had excited them. They were full of play and laughter. Mary moved about her business silently, watching the fire...

At that moment all the dogs began to bark together. She got up and opened the door, and the lights of a gig turned the corner and dashed into the yard. Another cob was tied to t...

ABNER FELLOWS was born in the front bedroom of Number Eleven Hackett’s Cottages, a four-roomed house of old brickwork that stood in the middle of a row of twenty-one, set diagon...

At first he never accompanied George on his evening visits to the Pound House. It pleased him better to walk home up the valley in the cool of the evening and sluice his head an...

Abner would laugh, but Alice glanced sharply at him. She hated to hear any woman’s name mentioned in connection with his, and most of all her sister’s; but Mr Higgins, unaware o...

George’s handsome face was working, against his will. He grasped Abner’s hand in his. It seemed a natural gesture. ‘You’re a proper pal,’ he said, and then, in a debauch of self...

While Abner and his father were talking football Alice had approached the sister, a dark, capable-looking woman whose features and hair and eyes were as rigid and sharp and meta...

‘If I’d had it it would have made no difference. You can’t stop a thing like this. Get up and put your things on. I’ll keep an eye on him. Get the children dressed and all.’