Lionel received a soul-warming reception from gentle and simple within and without a five-mile radius of his home. Apart from the young man's personal charm and good looks, he happened to be the first officer to return home wounded. The fact that the wound was not serious, that he treated it as a convenient peg upon which to hang three weeks' leave, made no difference. Indeed, it increased rather than diminished his influence in Nether-Applewhite so far as recruiting was concerned. His gay voice, his happy inconsequence, the vitality that radiated from him as he moved briskly from cottage to cottage, or rode up to talk to men working upon the property, achieved effects so far-reaching that possibly Hamlin was the only man in the parish able to measure them. The Squire and Davenant had appealed trenchantly for volunteers, using the time-worn arguments of Authority and believing sincerely enough that deaf ears might hear their message if it were shouted loud enough. The Parson, wiser man, had appealed to those same ears believing, with greater conviction, that noise and violence, veiled threats, bribery in any form, would defeat their ends. Right action, he contended, would come from within, at the persuasive, insistent call of conscience. Lionel Pomfret hit the trail--to use the Western expression--which wanders between the high road and the low. Looking at the gallant fellow, sitting erect on his horse, it seemed clear even to eyes dimmed by living in the twilight of unintellectual surroundings, that he impersonated something which captivates the rural mind more than anything else--excitement. Lionel told the labourers, none of whom had been farther afield than Salisbury or Southampton, stories of France bubbling over with humour and high spirits. And if this light-heartedness had astonished his father, we can imagine what bewilderment it begat in simpler minds. Many of them realised that in holding back they were missing _fun_! One hardly dares to use such a word. But it burst, like a bomb, from the lips of a man who had been "out there," who had been "through it," who bore scars, and who laughed at them. Many joined up; more held back. Laugh as he did about everything that concerned his own adventures and misadventures, Lionel became intensely serious concerning the main issue, trembling still in the balance. Kitchener of Khartoum must have more and more men. Otherwise, the sacrifices made and the hardships endured by the splendid Seven Divisions would be in vain, and, ultimately, directly or indirectly, the enemy would triumph. Charles, the second footman, and the odd man, enlisted within a week of Lionel's return home. Their places in the establishment were taken by maids.