“Well, reckon we’ve heard wot you’ve heard—as your boy’s bin shot fur deserting his regiment; and no one expects you to come and preach in chapel after that.” A wave of burning crimson went over Mr. Sumption’s face, so that Mrs. Hubble said afterwards she thought as he’d go off in a stroke. Then he was suddenly white again, and speaking quietly, but in a voice that somehow frightened her more than his shouting. “I shall certainly preach to-night. I will not have the service cancelled. Tell everyone who asks you that I shall certainly preach.” “Very good, sir.” She edged towards the door. “Mrs. Hubble! Stop a moment. Say this, too. I am not ashamed of my son. I reckon you all think I am ashamed of him, and you are putting your heads together and clacking, and pitying me for it. But I am not ashamed. He died for England. Mr. Archie himself says it. These are his very words: Wait!”—for Mrs. Hubble was going to bolt. “I’m waiting, Mus’ Sumption.” “He says, ‘Think of your son as having died so that other men should take warning by him and not desert the ranks, and, therefore, in that sense he has died for his country.’ Do you understand?” “Yes, sir.” “Then you can go.” Mrs. Hubble fled. 8 All that morning heavy pacings over her head convinced Mrs. Hubble that the minister was preparing a wonderful sermon. She generally guessed the temper of his discourse by the weight and width of the stumpings which preceded it. To-day she could hear him, as she expressed it, all over the room ... he was kicking the fire-irons ... he had overturned his chair ... he had flung up the window and banged it down again. Obviously something great was in process, and at the same time she felt that Mr. Sumption was rather mad. It was nothing short of indecent for him to preach to-night, after what had happened—and the queer way he had spoken about Jerry, too.... By this time the whole of Sunday Street knew about Jerry. He was discussed at breakfast-tables, in barns, on doorsteps, on milking-stools. No one was surprised; indeed, most people seemed to have foretold his bad end. “I said as he’d come to no good, that gipsy’s brat.” “A valiant minister wot can’t breed up his own son.” “Howsumdever, I’m middling sorry fur the poor chap; I’ll never disremember how he saaved that cow of mine wot wur dying of garget.” “And I’m hemmed, maaster, if he wurn’t better wud my lambing ewes than my own looker, surelye.”