"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 trousers, frayed at the edges and rather short, betraying the absence of a woman's care. Was it her he was after?