Ruth passed down the lane towards the golf links, the laughter sparkling in her brown eyes.

She was merry, malicious, mischievously prim. Then suddenly, as at the shutting of a door, her mood changed. Something warm and large and tremulous surged up unbidden out of the ocean-deeps of her.

To her own amazement she found herself sorry for the forlorn little figure with the eyes haunting and haunted, she had left standing in the road outside the Rectory gate.

A sense of the dramatic vicissitudes of life caught her by the throat. Three weeks ago that little man had been conquering the world with a swagger, the master of circumstance, over-riding destiny, sweeping obstacles aside, a domineer, with all the attributes of his kind—brutal, blatant, sure of himself, indifferent to others, scornful of the humble. Now he stood there at the cross-roads like some old tramp of the world, uncertain which way to turn—a mouse tossed overboard in mid-Atlantic by the cook\'s boy, the sport of tides and breakers, swimming round and round with ghastly eyes in ever-shortening circle.

The tempest which had all the world in grip, which had snatched Ernie from her arms, and hurled him across the seas, which had set millions of men to killing and being killed, had caught this insignificant gnat too, flying with such a fuss and buzz of wings under ominous skies, and then swaggered on its great way indifferent to the tiny creature it had crushed.

Ruth crossed the links, almost deserted now, and walked along over the crisp smooth turf, her eyes on the township of yellow huts rising out of the green in the great coombe across Summerdown Road.

Then she was aware of Mr. Chislehurst coming swiftly towards her beside the ha-ha of the Duke\'s Lodge. He looked, Ruth noticed at once, less harassed than he had done since the outbreak of war.

"I am glad I\'ve met you, Mrs. Caspar," he began with the old boyish enthusiasm. "I\'m off to-morrow and wasn\'t sure I should have time to come round and say goodbye to you and the babes."

Ruth stared.

"You\'re never going out there, sir!"

"Only as military chaplain."

Ruth refused to believe.

"But I thart you was against war and all that."

"So I am," Bobby answered gravely. He looked away towards Paradise. "But I feel Our Lord is there, or nowhere—just now."

Ruth felt profoundly moved. The young man\'s words, his action, brought home to her with a sudden pang, as not even the departure of Ernie had done, the change that had rushed upon the world.

Ruth looked at the smooth young face before her, brown and goodly, with all the hope and promise of the future radiant in it.

A passionate desire to take the boy in her arms, to shield him, to cry—You shan\'t! came over her. Then she gulped and said,

"Goodbye, sir," and moved on rapidly.


Passing through Meads, she turned the shoulder of the hill, and walked along the cliff, till she came to the long low house in the coombe.

It had a strangely deserted air, no spinal chairs and perambulators on the terrace, no nurses on the lawns, no beds on the balconies. All that busyness of quiet recreation which had been going on here for some years past had been brought to a sudden halt. Mrs. Lewknor came out to her and the two women sat a while on the terrace, talking. They had drawn very close in these few days, the regiment an ever-present bond between them. The husband of one was "out there" with the 1st battalion; the son of the other was racing home with the 2nd battalion in the Indian Contingent. Mrs. Lewknor felt a comfortable sense that once the two battalions were aligned on the West Front all would be well.

"Then let em all come!" the little lady said in her heart with almost vindictive glee.

As Ruth left she saw the Colonel in khaki, returning from his office. He came stalking along the cliff, his head on his left shoulder, looking seawards. There was about the gaunt old man that air of austere exaltation which had marked him from the moment of the outbreak of war. In his ears, indeed, ever since that hour, there had sounded a steady note, deep and pulsing like the throb of an engine—the heart of England beating on, beating eternally, tireless, true, from generation to generation.

And for one brief moment he had doubted her—might God forgive him!

Ruth asked him how recruiting was going.

"Well," replied the Colonel. "They\'re flocking in—men of all ages, classes, and creeds. I shipped off Burt this morning; and he\'s forty. Wanted to join the Hammer-men or Manchesters with his friend Tawney; but I said No: every man his own job, and sent him off to the flying folk as air-mechanic. He\'s joining up at Newhaven to-night, and in a week he\'ll be out there."

Ruth asked if there was any news of the Expeditionary Force.

"They\'re landed all right," the Colonel replied. "We should soon hear more. Our battalion\'s with the Fourth Division. If you go up on the Head you can see the transports crossing from Newhaven with the stuff."

"Think it\'ll be all right, sir?" asked Ruth.

"If we can stop their first rush," the Colonel answered. "Every day tells. We can\'t be too thankful for Liége, though Namur\'s a nasty knock."

Ruth looked across the sea.

"I wish we could do something for em," she said wistfully.

"We can," answered the Colonel sharply, almost sternly.

The old soldier took off his cap and stood there bare-headed on the edge of the white cliff, the wisps of silver hair lifting in the evening breeze.

"May the God of our fathers be with them in the day of battle!" he prayed, and added with quiet assurance as he covered again—"He will too."

Then he asked the woman at his side if she had heard from her husband.

Ruth dropped her eyes, sudden and secretive as a child.

"Ern\'s all right, I reckon," she said casually.

In fact a letter from him on the eve of sailing lay unopened in her pocket. She was treasuring it jealously, as a child treasures a sweet, to devour it with due ritual at the appointed hour in the appropriate place.

Ten minutes later she was standing waist-deep in the gorse of the Ambush looking about her.

Far away a silver-bellied air-ship was patrolling leisurely somewhere over the Rother Valley; and once she heard a loud explosion seawards and knew it for a mine.

Like a hind on the fell-side she stood up there, sniffing the wind. Behind her on the far horizon was a forest fire. She could smell it, see the glow of it, and the rumour of its coming was all a-round her: overhead the whistle and pipe of birds hard-driven, while under-foot the heather was alive with the stealthy migration of the under-world—adder and weasel, snake and hare, flying from the torment to come. But for her as yet the conflagration devouring the world was but an ominous red glare across the water. She breathed freely: for she had shaken off her immediate enemy—the Hunter.

Then she looked up and saw a man coming over the brow of Warren Hill towards her.

She dropped as though shot.

He was at her heels again. Face down, flat on the earth, she lay panting in her form.

And as she crouched there, listening to the thumping of her own heart, she was aware of another sound that came rollicking down to her, born on the wind. The Hunter was laughing, that huge gusty laughter of his she knew so well. Had he tracked her down?

She heard his feet approaching on the turf. Was the earth trembling at the touch of them or was it the beating of her own heart that shook it?

Prone on the ground, spying through the roots of the gorse, she could see those feet—those solid familiar boots that had dangled so often before her fire; and the bottoms of the trous............