"Souls may take a notion to leave us for a spell. My soul seems to have flown out o' winder, as it did when Lizzie died." "But it came back." "Yes; that be true; it came back. Forgi' me, child, for shovin' my wickedness on your lil' shoulders." "Dear Mother, you must talk to somebody." "When I be alone, evenings, I talks to Solly." "Well, I never!" "And he understands me, yas, he do. He be very human, and a gert sinner." Fancy laughed; and the pretty trickle of sound may have melted a little ice. Susan Yellam laughed with her. "Solly--a sinner?" "Ay. He be a black murderer. He killed a cat day afore yesterday, and come back to me, all over scratches, and wi' a look as if--as if he'd been churched." "What a naughty hypocrite! I wish he hadn't killed the poor cat." "'Twas a vagabond cat, no better than she should be. I scolded Solly, and told 'un to kill William Saint's tabby, if so be as he couldn't help breaking the Sixth Commandment. I be no better than Solly." Fancy looked round. "Where is the naughty dog?" "Ah-h-h! He be courtin' some four-legged hussy. I knows 'un. Last night he come in after bed-time, so pleased as Punch. There be Original Sin in animals, as ther be in us. And feeling as I does, 'tis easy to forgive Solly his trespasses. Now you knows nearly everything." As the days succeeded each other, slightly better news came from France about Lionel Pomfret. At the end of the month the Squire brought him home. He lay upon his back; pain had become intermittent instead of constant. A great specialist said that he might, in time, recover the use of his lower limbs. Not a complaint leaked from his lips. Susan Yellam accepted this partial recovery from what had been deemed a lethal wound as a sign vouchsafed to her. Jealousy, however, was kindled by the professional nurse, who kept from her patient an old friend lavish with bull's-eyes in happier days and doubly anxious on that account to minister faithfully to him in the unhappy present. London was visited by Zeppelins. Nether-Applewhite would have accepted this fresh proof of Hun "frightfulness" with more Christian resignation, if one of the villagers had not happened to be present during the October raid which caused such destruction in the Strand. Uncle heard the tale at first hand, and repeated it everywhere. Martin Mowland, the bricklayer, had travelled to London to see his son, who was lying, desperately wounded, in the Charing Cross Hospital. According to Martin the Zeppelin had hovered just above his head, about tree-high. Then bombs had fallen with terrifying explosions. Uncle supplied supplementary detail to his own audience at the _Sir John Barleycorn_. "I says to Martin: 'What did 'ee do, old friend?' And he says to me: 'Uncle,' he says, 'I thought my hour was come, but I legs it away so fast as I can to my lodgings....'" At this point Uncle, being an accomplished _raconteur_, would pause. Then he would add impressively: