So far, Nether-Applewhite had been fortunate. None of the young men had been killed; none had been seriously wounded. And it was generally held that "Fritz" couldn't stick another winter. Alfred became a sergeant. Mrs. Yellam appeared in her pew, next Sunday, wearing a new bonnet. But, coming out of church, she met William Saint, and cut him dead. She now thought of him, habitually, as a "Prooshian," out for world-dominion. When her Alfred returned from the wars, he would smash William Saint. The triumph of such a "sneak" must be short-lived. Like the Kayser, he had sold himself, body and soul, to Satan. Satan would claim his own in God A'mighty's good time. Renewed belief in a Personal Deity had crept back into a heart less indurated. But He remained there, so to speak, on sufferance. At any moment, He might be driven out, as before. Omnipotence, so Mrs. Yellam argued during many vigils, could not be reasonably regarded as such if Satan triumphed unduly. It is to be feared that a daily motor-'bus service to Salisbury and back under the auspices of William Saint would have been regarded as a Satanic triumph. But such a service, as yet, had not been inaugurated. Alfred wrote home once a week, alternately to Fancy and his mother. The life agreed with him. Obviously he accepted rough and smooth philosophically, regarding himself as a part of a vast machine that would "rampage" on with or without him. Although he was careful to keep from his mother and Fancy the horrors which they heard from the wounded soldiers, now and again some careless phrase would reveal, illuminatingly, everything that the good fellow wished to suppress. "You enjoy your food as never was," he wrote, "when you know that any square meal may be the last. A chum of mine got it yesterday. And he was smoking a Woodbine I gave him. The man next him, as told me all about it, finished the Woodbine. I couldn't help laughing." "Sometimes," said Mrs. Yellam, deliberately, "I thinks they be all mad." She turned almost fiercely upon Fancy. "Why did he laugh, my boy as hated to kill a fly?" Fancy hazarded a conjecture. "Men are not so very, very different from us women. I often laugh to save myself crying." Mrs. Yellam admitted that there might be something in this. The Squire was busy with his bailiff, fattening bullocks, and, generally speaking, trying to increase his flocks and herds. In this task, he found an enthusiastic partner in Fishpingle, who possessed two obsessing interests: love of the land and love of the Pomfrets. Nobody, except the Squire and Lady Pomfret knew that this quiet, handsome old man, so distinguished in appearance, and so choice in his use of words, might have been lord of the manor, had he marched into life along the broad highway which leads from the altar. Fate ordained otherwise. Fishpingle had been constrained to stroll placidly along a by-path. He hoped that he would so walk till the end.