In a few minutes, the movements of Jem’s head showed his mother that, as she said, something was coming. Jem’s hearing was uncommonly acute: and what he now heard, and what other people heard directly after, was a drum and fife. Neighbour after neighbour came to tell the Johnsons what their ears had told them already,—that there was a recruiting party in Bleaburn again; and Jem went out, attracted by the music. “It is like the candle to the moth to him,” said his mother. “I must go and see that nobody makes sport of him, or gives him drink.” “Sit still, Aunty; I will go. And there is Warrender, I see, and Ann. We will take care of Jem.” And so they did. Ann looked so meaningly at Mary, meantime, as to make Mary look inquiringly at Ann. “Only, Ma’am,” said Ann, “that Sally Simpson is standing yonder. She does not like to come forward, but I know she would be pleased.” “Her name is Simpson? How glad I am he has married her!” whispered Mary, as she glanced at the ring which Sally was rather striving to show. “I hope you are happy at last, Sally.” “Oh, Ma’am, it is such a weight gone! And I do try to make him happy at home, that he may never repent.” Mary thought the doubt should be all the other way—whether the wife might not be the most likely to repent having bound herself to a man who could act towards her as Simpson had done. Widow Slaney was not to be seen. The fife and drum had sent her to the loft. She came down to see Mary; but her agitation was so great that it would have been cruelty to stay. They heard her draw the bolt as they turned from the door. “She does not like seeing Jack Neale any more than hearing the drum,” observed the host of the Plough and Harrow, who had come forth to invite the Good Lady in, ‘to take a glass of something.’ “That is Jack Neale, Ma’am; that wooden-legged young man. He is married, though, for all his being so crippled. The young woman loved him before; and she loves him all the more now; and they married last week, and live at his father’s. It must be a sad sight to his father; but he says no word about it. Better not; for Britons must be loyal.” “And why not?” said the Doctor, who had hastened in from the brow, on seeing that something unusual was going forward below, and had ventured to offer the Good Lady his arm, as he thought an old comrade in the conflict with sickness and death might do. “Why not?” said the Doctor. “We make grievous complaints of the fatality of war; and it _is_ sad to see the maiming and hear of the slaughter. But we had better spend our lamentations on a fatality that we can manage. It would take many a battle of Albuera to mow us down, and hurt us in sense and limb, as the fever has done.” “Why, that is true!” cried some, as if struck by a new conviction.