MORNING SERIAL

YET, for all the misery, there was laughter to be heard, and a smile seen on the grimy, perspiring faces.

They were brothers in distress. A community of down-at- heels. Misfortune was common to each, and pride was banished.

“Don’t know where the hell I’m going to dump this lot — bloody coal-house is full already. Been up here ten times.”

“Shouldn’t worry over that, Kim. There’s plenty o’ chaps here’d be glad to get rid of it for you.”

“Jesus! Who’d like to be a collier?”

“Not me, you bet your life. Give me the mills every time.”

“This load’s for Marged Ann Matthews, the Bungalow. One-an’- a-tanner a sack she’s offered me. One-an’- a-tanner ! Two pints and three packets o’ Woodbines — a bloody fortune!”

CHAPTER NINE At last the long era of unemployment came to an end. It happened as suddenly as it began.

Once more the factory chimneys belched their black fumes over the town. The deep holes in the Waun slag tips became covered with weeds and grass, or shored in to give no clue that an army of tatterdemalions had once invaded the bleak slopes. The street corners and the parks were deserted. In the hours before dawn the clip-clop of the tinworkers’ clogs was heard again.

Prosperity had returned to Abermor, such prosperity that only came to the workers in a weekly wage packet on Friday afternoons.

It was April when Bevan’s opened its gates and Ieuan found himself back with his companions of the coreshop and steel foundry. His plan to attend night school in the winter months had not materialized.

Attendance there had been affected by the mass unemployment. There had been no incentive for study. The younger men had been in no mood for it. Consequently, the classes were abandoned.

Ieuan’s distaste for the foundry still remained, and his ambition alone gave him strength to face it once more.