"What's the news," he said to one of the villagers whom he met on the
way.

"'Bout the same, sir. Don't seem to be much 'appenin' at present," the
man replied.

He went on to the news agency and got the papers, and then, hastily
glancing at the headlines for the more obvious news, he tucked the
papers under his arm and went slowly back to the Manor by another road
than the one by which he had come into the village. There was a field
with a hollow where one could lie in shelter and see the whole of the
bay and the eastern cliffs in one direction, and the Axe Valley in
another, and here he sat for a while, smoking and reading and now and
then trying to follow the tortuous windings of the Axe as it came down
the marsh to the sea.

"If Ninian were here," he said to himself, "he'd start making plans to
straighten it out!..."

He glanced through the war bulletins, with their terrible iteration of
trenches taken and trenches lost. People read the war news carelessly
now, almost wearily, so accustomed had they become to the daily report
of positions evacuated and positions retrieved, forgetting almost that
at the taking or the losing of a trench, men lost their lives.

"There isn't much in the paper this morning," he said, and then he
turned to a page of lesser news, and almost as he did so, his eye caught
sight of Gilbert's name. His grip on the paper was so tight that he tore
it. He stared at the paragraph with startling eyes, reading and
re-reading it, as if he were unable to comprehend the meaning of the
thing he read.... Then, as understanding came to him, he gaped about
with vacant eyes.

"Oh, my God!" he cried, "Gilbert's been killed!"

9

He got up, half choking, and scrambled out of the field. A labourer
greeted him, but he made no answer. He ran up the road, and as he ran,
he cried to himself, "Gilbert's dead ... it isn't true ... it isn't
true!..."

He thrust open the gate and ran swiftly up to the door.

"Mary!" he shouted. "Mary! Mary!!..."

She came running to him, followed by her mother.

"What is it?" she cried, and her heart was full of fear.

Mrs. Graham clutched at him. "It isn't ... it isn't...."

He sank down into a chair and buried his head in his hands. "Gilbert's
dead," he said. "He's been killed!..."

Mary knelt beside him, and drew his head on to her shoulder. She did not
speak. There was nothing that could be said. She knew that Gilbert and
Henry had cared for each other as men