As he slowly spelt out line after line, his forefinger moving along the column in pace with his eyes, the air of contentment with which he had at first settled to his task gave way, first to an expression of puzzled astonishment, then to one of irresolution, and finally to absolute consternation. After, however, reading and re-reading the paragraph which had attracted his attention in the weekly sheet, scratching his head, rubbing his nose, drumming with his fingers on the table, and in fact availing himself to the full of every recognised aid to thought, his brow cleared, and bringing one mighty clenched hand down on the open palm of the other, he exclaimed aloud:— “I’ll do it! I’m blest if I don’t do it—my dooty do stare me in the face.” Thereupon, wheeling round slowly in his chair so as to face the door—a matter of some little difficulty—he proceeded to call, or rather to bellow at the top of his voice. “Missus! Grandma! Come here, will ’ee? Polly, Annie—be there any one about? Here little uns—go an’ fetch Grandma, one on you. Mis—sus!” Presently there was a rush of feet, and Mrs. Sampson entered, followed by her married daughter, Polly, with three or four children clinging to her skirts, while Maidy Annie, the father’s favourite, hastened in from the rear. “Bless me, Granfer! whatever be the matter?” enquired his wife anxiously. Good old Sampson had been known as “Father” in the family circle for many a year, until Polly and her husband had taken up their abode at the farm, when the title of “Granfer,” naturally used by the children, had come to be universally adopted. “There be matter enough for one while,” he now responded gloomily, and yet with a certain air of dignified triumph. “Dear heart alive, they Boers bain’t a-comin’ to fight us over here, be they?” cried Annie, who was an imaginative young person. “There’s no knowin’ what they’ll be a-thinkin’ on if we don’t look out,” responded her father importantly. “It bain’t so much the Boers,” he continued, with a superior air, “’tis the French as we must be on our guard against—an’ the Germans—and the Roosians!” he cried emphatically, his eyes growing wider and wider as he named each nationality. “They do say that they do all hate us worse nor p’ison, an’ is only lookin’ for an opportunity for attackin’ us.” “Dear, dear, you don’t say so!” groaned Mrs. Sampson. “’Tis worse nor in Boney’s time. Lard! I can mind my father tellin’ me as when he was a boy they was expectin’ for sure as Boney ’ud land, and the country very near went mad wi’ fright. An’ now ye say there be more nor the French agen us?” “What ever is to be done,” put in Polly. “I can’t think as there can be many soldiers a-left i’ the country wi’ them great ships full goin’ out week after week. Who’s to defend us if any o’ them folks from abroad do come?”