"But the country-folk, sir! Surely they'll report." "No, they won't," stonily. "This is Sussex. We aren't alive in Sussex: we're dead-alive.... If they did see anything was up they'd only think it was one of the ordinary rows between the blockade-men and the gentlemen, as they call the smugglers." He looked out of the Downward window. There was little comfort. Tall men in French uniforms swaggered about England's greensward as though already it was theirs. He could catch their beastly foreign lingo. The sight and sound made him mad. Grim old watchdog that he was, he felt the bristles at the back of his neck rising. What right had these strange folk in his back-yard?--O to make his teeth meet in their gaitered legs! Besides the Frenchmen, not a soul stirring. English rooks cawing over English green, and an English sheepdog answering them. A lonely land at the best of times, it was a desert now. Westward in a cloud of beeches, a grey house glimmered--George Cavendish's--empty. The Seahouses over by Splash Point--empty too. So was every house of any size for ten miles inland from Fair-light to Selsea Bill. Everybody bolted who could afford it. The old lady of Hailsham quite a proverb for pluck in these parts; and they said she looked under her bed every night to see if the French had come. And the luck! where was the luck? Ten days since this uttermost corner of England had stirred to the strange music of men making ready for battle: bugle-calling Cavalry in the new barracks in Eastbourne on the hill; thundering Artillery in the Circular Redoubt at Langney Point; Sea-Fencibles in the martello- towers along Pevensey Levels. Now all was still and dead again. A concentration in force had taken place at Lewes. The Cavalry had been withdrawn to the camp there. A case of cholera had emptied Langney Fort. The Sea-Fencibles had run away. Black Diamond had swept up the blockademen. Darkness, darkness, everywhere. Kit stole to his side. "We _must_ get a message through to Nelson," he chattered. "We _must_." The boy felt himself at war with destiny, and crushed by it. He recalled the Man of Despair in the Iron Cage in Pilgrim's Progress. The fate of the country was in his hands. He alone had the knowledge that could save her, and he could not use it. He was a dumb thing, possessed of a vast world-secret, which he could not impart for lack of voice. "If there's no other way, we must cut our way through." The Parson met him with a rough, "Nonsense." "Why?" hotly. "Impossible--that's why." It was the first time he had thrown that dead-wall word across the lad's path, and it maddened the boy. After all, _he_ was responsible, not this beefy soldier. "That's a word we don't know in _our_ Service, sir," he cried with scornful nostrils. The taunt touched the Parson on the raw. He swung round savagely. "_Your_ Service!" he stormed. "At a time such as this, there is only one Service for loyal hearts, and that's the Service of his country."