After that we sat in a miserable silence for full half-an-hour. It was then growing light, and the dawn came with a sharp burst of sleet that penetrated the bushes and stung our faces as we sat huddled under the bridge. “A dreary morning, cousin,” I says. A low booming roar came echoing across the fields. I forgot my hurt and tried to start to my feet. “Cannon!” says I. “They are bombarding the old place after all. And yet surely----” But she had rushed to the mouth of the bridge and forced her way through the bushes, and there she stood, gazing across the dank fields towards the old house. The roar of the cannon came again. She drew back within the bridge, and dropping at my side burst into a passion of bitter weeping. “Come, cousin,” says I, laying my hand on her arm, “be comforted----” She turned her face suddenly upon me, all aflame with anger. “Comforted?” says she, “Shame upon you, Richard Coope! Oh, cowards that we are, to have skulked from the old place like rats from a sinking ship! Doesn’t it shame you,” she says, “to sit here in a ditch when you ought to be there defending your own?” “Why, cousin,” says I, “considering that it’s through no choice of my own that I sit in this ditch, it doesn’t; and as to defending my own, why, there’s naught in the old house that’s mine save a book or two. It’s not my property,” I says, nursing and groaning over my lame leg. “But it’s mine,” says she, drying her tears. “Then go and defend it,” I says, sulkily. “You were better employed in that than in preaching to me.” She turned her face and stared at me long and hard. “You have the rarest faculty for saying insolent things,” says she. “Faith, it’s a poor one in comparison with yours!” says I, testily enough. She coloured up to the eyes at that. Egad, she had no liking for such plain talk! But she stared at me again and then at my foot, which was at that moment exceeding painful. “Can I do aught to relieve you?” she says. “I wish you could,” says I. “But you can’t, and so there’s an end on’t.” “Oh,” she says, bridling, “if you don’t wish to talk with me----” and she drew herself away. But after a time she looked round at me again. “Will they destroy the old house?” she says. “I don’t know, cousin,” says I. “They seem to have given over firing at it, but these two shots will have knocked some lath and plaster about.” She looked at my foot which I was dipping in the water again. “What a misfortune!” she says. “I cannot abide this idleness. It irks me to sit here, doing naught, as if we were rats in a cage.” But since we were helpless I made no answer to her, and so there we sat, miserable as you please, and without the grey dawn widened into a dull morning. II.