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I dont know how much time elapsed before I opened my eyes again but when I did it was to look up into Sam's face. My head ached and I felt stiff and I was unable to turn, but when I moved my eyes I was looking at David, and David brought my mind to Constance. But I could not ask where she was, I was too tired. I felt very tired, and Sam said softly, "Go to sleep." And I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

Again, when I opened them, it was to see Sam's face still there, but when I turned my eyes to the other side, this time I saw Constance.

She smiled so tenderly at me, and leaning over me she kissed me, and her face obliterated the white glare of the hospital ward, and again I went to sleep.

That seemed to be the trouble, I was always going to sleep. People came and went, doctors and nurses, and they dressed my head and they talked to me and said such things as, "Wouldn't you like to sit up?"

But I didn't like to sit up, I closed my eyes and went to sleep. I knew that Dad was not dead, his collapse had been a heart attack; I knew that Constance was all right because I had seen her, and my fears for her were gone, for Don was where he would be unable to hurt me or her for some time at least, Sam had told me. One night as he sat by my bed he whispered to me, "Christine, listen to me. There's nothing more to worry about. He can't do anything to you now."

I remember forcing myself to say one word in the form of a question:

"Dead?"

"No, he's goin' along the line."

The battle seemed over and I was resting. I wanted to go on resting for ever.

I do not remember much of the transition from the hospital to Sam's house, it meant only a change of bed. I remembered nothing much until yesterday afternoon when I heard the doctor talking, and I opened my eyes and looked across the valley to Fenwick Houses, to where it had all begun. Then I had started thinking, thinking from the very beginning, and as I thought I wondered why I was doing it, why I was troubling myself. It wasn't until I had gone over everything right to the very end that I knew there was something gnawing at me, something bothering me, something I wanted to know. One more thing. Simply, how long would Don Dowling get? Would it be long enough to make living worth while, or would it just be sufficiently long to prepare myself for the battle again ? If I was certain of one thing in my muddled mind, it was that I was preparing for no more battles. The doctor was right, I had fought all the battles of which I was capable. I wasn't made for fighting battles, I was a weakling, there was no strength in me.

So when Sam returned from seeing the doctor out he was amazed to find me sitting up, my eyes wide, staring across the valley, and he said with an eagerness that somehow hurt me, "You're better?"

I lifted my hand and touched him, and my eyes looked into his for a long, long moment, then I asked in a whisper, "Tell me, Sam. When ...

when will you know ...?" I did not finish, and Sam's lids drooped and the pressure of his fingers tightened on my hand as he said, "It's over and done with."

"When?" I asked.

"Three days ago."

"Three days?"

I stared at him and felt my eyelids stretching for knowledge. He moistened his lips twice and then he said, "I'll get you the paper if you feel fit for it." He was looking at me again.

I'm fit for it. "

He brought -me the paper and left me alone with it, and slowly, slowly I read it, and I learned of the stuff that Sam was made of, and the strength and courage of him both amazed and frightened me, and the self-sacrificing nature of him brought the tears raining down my face, for Sam had manacled his conscience for the remainder of his life.

Through burning eyes I read over again bits of the trial. I did not read the parts dealing with Don's abnormal tendencies, I knew all about them. The part that drew me was the report of Sam's evidence and Don's reaction to it. Was it poetic justice that his scream-abuse of his brother had only helped to confirm the sentence of guilty but insane, guilty of shooting to kill me and of killing his accomplice, Reginald Shawley, who fought him for possession of the gun? How convincing it read, but not one word of it was true.

I raised my eyes and looked out of the window again. There was the picture clear before me. I could see Sam struggling with the man to get hold of the gun, while Don lay senseless on the floor, and I knew now as I did then that it was not Don who had shot me, nor could he have shot his partner.

Sam's mind, waiting all the years for this chance, had no need to fumble and ask, "What will I do?" The gun must have gone off when he was struggling with the man. It was self- defence, and he would have had nothing to fear at any trial. Moreover Don's seizure of Constance and the fact that both men had on them a quantity of stolen money, would have been enough to put Don away for some length of time. Yet always there would have been the threat of his return. So Don had been found by the police with the gun and razor to his hand and, by his side, the young girl he had tried to abduct. In this, the paper said, he had been foiled only by his brother attacking him unexpectedly from behind with a piece of wood. This at least was true.

The reading sounded fantastic, like something in the Sunday papers but which people knew for a certainty could never hap pen to them, not to ordinary people. But we were all ordinary people, and it had happened to us. Yet no, Don was no ordinary being, Don was an evil being, and although he would remain in prison during Her Majesty's pleasure, he would be here with us each day, treading on Sam's conscience heavier as the years went on. It was too much to bear alone. Sam must not be left to bear it alone. This knowledge told me I must live and love him and fight my private fight against the bottle. Sam never asked me how much I remembered of that night and I never told him. I owe him that.

I owe Sam so much, so very much. Sam at this moment is to me as God.

Let other people judge him as they will, I cannot but love him for my deliverance. Sam has played the Almighty.

Let the Almighty be the sole judge of his imitator.

Further examples of Catherine Cookson's renowned ability to capture the flavour of the northern scene and its people, past and present: THE DWELLING PLACE

When Cissie Brodie's parents were taken by the fever in 1832, Cissie suddenly found herself the head of a family of nine brothers and sisters. She was just fifteen and the youngest was but a babe in arms, yet she decided that rather than have the family split up in the workhouse, she would try to find work to keep them all, for they would be happier together. But how ? And where would they live ?

In The Dwelling Place, Catherine Cookson tells with compassion and warmth of Cissie Brodie's heroic fight to rear the family under appalling conditions of cold, near starvation and persecution in the class-conscious society of nineteenth-century England.

o 552'll203 8 i.

FEATHERS IN THE FERE

Every once in a while circumstance traps a group of people in a pattern of tragedy and violence from which they struggle vainly to fight free.

Thus it was with the Master of Cock Shield Farm, Angus McBain, who was too easily tempted to sin, too sinful to escape a hideous retribution and Jane his gentle daughter who devoted her life to caring for her deformed young brother. Amos, the legless child whose tortured spirit transformed him into a demon capable of every cruelty even murder .

and Molly Geary, the 'fallen' servant girl, whose love for the child she had borne in shame gave her strength to become a truly courageous woman . o 552 09318 I 1 pound 25 pence MAGGIE ROWAN by catherine cook son

The Taggarts and the Rowans had been friends for thirty years. Their children had grown up together, they had shared the worries and hardships of life in a Durham mining village. When Ann Rowan and David Taggart decide to marry, everyone was delighted except Maggie Rowan.

Maggie was consumed with jealousy at her sister's good fortune, for she was a plain, soured and embittered young woman on the surface but underneath she longed to be loved.

o 552 08444 i 1. THE MENAGERIE by catherine cook son The Broadhursts were a mining family and they appeared to be happy, united, and loyal.

But it was only Jinny wife, mother, sister who held the Broadhursts together with a pride and strength that prevented their fears and hates from overwhelming them. There was Jack, her younger son, Lottie, her sister who was not quite. normal;

and Larry, the bright one, her favourite who was obsessed with the memory of the girl who had jilted him and who would sacrifice anyone, family and friends alike, if he could only see Pam Tumbull again.

o 552 08653 3 pounds . oo

THE LONG CORRIDOR by catherine cook son

To outsiders the life of Dr. Paul Higgins appeared to be a contented one. He seemed to have everything a man could want. But the facade that Paul and Bett Higgins presented to the world concealed a welter of hate that grew worse with the passing years.

Between Paul and Bett stood the barrier of the past of secrets that, were they known, could affect everyone about them.

o 552 08493 X 95?

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