As often as she can do so during the day she runs up to him, and at night, after she has given the men their supper, she reads to him. It is only the Bible now, and by the old man’s choice no longer the Gospels, but the Old Testament--Job with its lamentations, and afterwards the Psalms, but not the joyful ones, only those in which David calls on the Lord to revenge him upon his enemies. Her father is a changed man. His heart has grown bitter. He takes a fierce joy in David’s denunciations and mutters them to himself when he is alone. The girl was right. Those spawn of the Pit--what fate is too bad for them? Christmas comes, the second Christmas, then spring, the second spring. Mona watches the life of the camp with loathing. Rising in the grey of the morning, she sees the prisoners ranging round their compounds like beasts in a cage, and on going to bed in the dark she sees the white light of the arc-lamps which have been set up at the far corners of the camp to prevent their escape during the night. She hears of frequent rioting, rigorously put down, and then of an attempt at insurrection in the messroom of the First Compound and of four prisoners being shot down by the guard. Serve them right! She has no pity. She overhears the guards talking of indescribable vices among the men of the Third Compound and then of terrible punishments. Her work sometimes requires that she should pass this compound, and as often as she does so she becomes conscious that behind the barbed wires the men are looking at her with evil eyes and laughing like monkeys. Her flesh creeps--she feels as if they were stripping her naked. The beasts! The monsters! One sunny morning in the early summer Mona is awakened by the loud boom of a gun from the sea. Looking out she sees a warship coming to anchor in the bay. Later she sees great activity in the officers’ quarters and hears that the Home Secretary has come from London to make an inspection of the camp and that the Commandant has sent for the Governor. Still later she sees the three going the rounds of the compounds. Towards noon they pass the farm on their way to the Commandant’s dining-room, and, the kitchen window being open, Mona hears what the stranger, who looks angry, is saying: “What can you expect? Shut men up like dogs and what wonder if they develop the vices of dogs! The only remedy is work, work, work.” A few days after that the joiners and bricklayers are building workshops all over the camp and within a month there is the sound of hammering and sawing and planing from inside these places, as if the prisoners were working. Mona laughs. They will never turn these creatures into human beings--never! Autumn comes and the fields outside the camp are waving yellow and red to the harvest, but the Manx boys, nearly all that are worth anything, are away at the war, and the farmers are saying the corn will lie down uncut and rot on the ground if they cannot get help to gather it.