Solomon, as a last reassuring protest, would curl up and fall asleep. Mrs. Yellam would sit on, staring into the fire, trying to adjust the workings of the Divine Mind with her own perplexed intelligence. Often kindly sleep would come to the rescue, and she would wake with a start to find the fire burnt out and the kitchen cold. But Solomon lay snug and warm against her. Many persons, besides Mrs. Yellam, were mazed and dazed during these Spring days. At Neuve Chapelle, our cavalry had their feet in stirrup ready to ride down the enemy, when a thick mist rolled up and balked them of their prey. Jupiter Pluvius seemed to be fighting against us. The appalling earthquake in Italy was joyously affirmed by Germans to be God's judgment upon an ally who had deserted them. Strikes in the industrial parts, Irish troubles going from bad to worse, seemed to indicate the chastening hand of Omnipotence. But we had accomplished a mighty miracle. Five hundred thousand men were in France, and not a life lost during the perilous operations connected with transport. And then came the crushing disaster of the _Lusitania_. A wave of horror and rage swept over the country. Till now, Lissauer's "Hymn of Hate" had aroused ridicule, not resentment, amongst English-speaking peoples. The Belgian atrocities, known in all their horror to very few, had been accepted as the handiwork of brutes driven mad by drink and blood-lust, not as the systematic, inspired doctrine of Frightfulness. But when all Germany rose up to justify the slaughter of helpless women and children, when streets were beflagged, medals struck, and the schools held holiday, the nation began, at last, to grasp the truth. Might meant to stick at nothing. Recruiting, in the rural districts, received a sharp stimulus. Fancy, lying awake at night, shed many tears, but none before Mrs. Yellam. The pair, so strangely different, got on well together, because, so Susan said, the girl was not a chatter-box. Often they would meet and part without exchanging more than a dozen words. Fancy would help with the work, the never-ending cleaning and sweeping, or take some sewing and sit by the kitchen fire in silence. These quiet ways endeared her more and more to Alfred's mother, and occasionally, very seldom, Fancy would be vouchsafed a glimpse of an indurated heart. She had noticed that Mrs. Yellam avoided any direct reference to the Deity, Whose name, before the war, had been so often on her lips, the personal God, Whose guiding finger, even in trivial, domestic affairs, could be so plainly seen. One day, on the eve of Alfred's departure for France, Fancy said nervously: "God will be with Alfred." Mrs. Yellam said quickly: "He be wi' the Kayser, too, seemin'ly."