When Rory Macshane saw the raincoat, something inside him said, “This is it.”

It was a good, heavy man’s raincoat and it had been dropped in the toolshed by a thoughtless mechanic who was repairing the electric pump. In a flash, the raincoat was hidden and Rory walked back to rejoin his gang, carrying the angle irons the boss had sent him to fetch.

Rory had learnt, by a year’s imprisonment on the Moor, that it isn’t difficult to escape from a prison working party on Dartmoor. Several prisoners had bolted from their gangs in that period, bolted into the mist and simply disappeared: but all of them (with one notable exception) had been brought back within a few days: two had given themselves up, defeated by hunger and cold and rain: drenched, starved, shivering, they could not face another night of aching misery in the clinging mist and penetrating chill of the cruel Moor. A man needed more than the courage to make an initial dash if he were going to get away and keep away: he needed to use his wits to plan, to prepare over a period of months, to be quite clear as to what he was going to do and where he was going to do it. And he needed clothing, to conceal his prison uniform and to protect him from the cold; Rory favoured the winter months for escape: he believed in moving by night and lying up during the day, and the longer hours of darkness outweighed the cold to Rory’s mind.