"You pessimist--youth's going to have the time of its life--action, a world in the making! Why Marsh, it's our age, this. It means the old men take a back seat!" cried Lindon, laughing at Tilly, who hung on his arm. "And what of us?" she asked, a little jealous. "Nurses, all of you." She shivered slightly. "I should be ill at the sight of blood." It was evening when they sat on the sandhills and saw the wide-winged sunset spread across the fen-land. Suddenly a cry from Bobbie made them turn. There, on the grey horizon, where sea dissolved into approaching night, they saw a twinkle of lights, flashing through the greyness. The slim forms of ships were just discernible as they slipped northwards into the gathering darkness. "Warships!" cried Lindon. "We're ready and watching." It began to rain. Bobbie and John were the last to enter the house. They halted for a moment in a cutting of the sandhills and looked over the dark expanse of sea. That slow procession northwards of ships had given a sudden reality to the rumours. John took Vernley's arm as they walked on in silence. "I wonder where we'll all be next year at this time," said Vernley. "I suppose this is the end of things--well--we've had a good time--haven't we, Scissors?" John could not speak. The great drama rendered him speechless. Out there, across the North Sea, lay Germany. In millions of homes, their windows bright in the dusk, mothers and wives were saying farewell to their loved ones; in Austria too, in Russia, thousands of leagues across the Balkans, from the Bretagne coast to the sunny Riviera, the hand of Mars knocked on the door of castle and cottage. Already the sky was stabbed with flame, the silence of the harvest fields broken with the battery of guns. John looked across the peaceful fenland. Here and there a light shone in a farmstead; the silence was broken only by the low sighing of the sea, fitfully borne inland. England, his country, sinking to sleep, guarded by her inviolate seas. A great love of this land rose in his heart. God keep her secure! "Dulce et decorum pro patria mori," he half murmured to himself, but Vernley heard him. "Yes, and there's one thing, Scissors--we're all in it together, that'll be the good part of it." They walked on, arm in arm.