One night she hears that the better-behaved of the prisoners are to be sent out to the neighbouring farms to work at the harvesting, and next morning she sees a batch of them going off with their guard, down the avenue and through the gates. “There’ll be trouble coming of this,” she thinks. “Such men are not to be trusted.” Inside a month the camp is ringing with a scandal. The letters arriving at the camp for the prisoners have always been examined by censors. Most of the letters have come from friends in their own country, but now it is found that some are from Manx girls, who, having met with German prisoners while working on the land, have struck up friendships. One of these girls has written to tell her German lover that she is in “trouble” and that the wife of her master is turning her out. Her name is Liza Kinnish. Mona’s anger is unbounded. The slut! She has a brother at the war too! Mona has no pity for such creatures. While their boys out there at the front are fighting and dying for them they are carrying on at home with these German reptiles! Serve them right, whatever the disgrace that falls on them! “I’d have such women whipped--yes, whipped in the public market-place.” From that time forward Mona hates the prisoners as she had never hated them before. She cannot bear to look into their German faces or to hear the sound of their German voices. All the same she has to live among them for her father’s sake and even to serve them twice a day with the milk from the dairy. Late in the year, at seven in the morning, she is measuring the milk into the cans, which are marked with the numbers of the various compounds. The prisoners come to carry them away, saluting her with the mist about their mouths as they do so, but she makes no answer. When she thinks they have all gone she finds the can of the Third Compound still standing by the dairy door where she had left it. The pale-faced boy who coughed always came for that, and was generally the last to arrive. After a while, when she has her back to the door, she hears a voice behind her. “Is this for me, miss?” She starts. Something in his voice arrests her. It is not harsh and guttural, like that of the other prisoners, but soft, deep and human. For one dizzy moment she almost thinks it is Robbie’s. She turns. A young man, whom she has never seen before, is on the threshold. He is about thirty years of age, tall, slim, erect, fair-haired, with hazel eyes and a clean-cut face that has an open expression. Can this be a German? After a moment of silence Mona says: “Who are you?” He tells her. The young fellow who had fetched the milk before had broken a blood-vessel on awakening early that morning and been carried up to the hospital. “What’s your name?” “Oskar.” “Oskar what?” “Oskar Heine.” “And you are in Compound Three?” “Yes.” Mona gazes at him in silence for a moment, and then recovering herself, she says: “Yes, that’s yours.”