A week later when Oskar comes as usual he is carrying a small wooden box, which he sets down inside the dairy door. It is from Ludwig’s mother, and contains one of the little glass domes of artificial flowers which the Germans lay on the graves of their dead. “She asks me to lay them on Ludwig’s, but how can I, not being allowed to go out of the gates?” The lid of the box has been loosened, and lifting it, he shows the glass dome with an inscription attached. Mona allows herself to stoop and look at it. It is in German. “What does it say?” she asks. “‘With Mother’s everlasting love.’” Mona feels as if a knife has gone to her heart, but she rises hastily and says sharply: “You may take it away. I’ll have nothing to do with it,” and Oskar goes off, but he leaves the box behind him. All day long she tries not to look at it, but it is constantly meeting her eye, and in the evening, when her work is done and everything is quiet, she picks up the box, puts it under her cloak and turns towards the gates of the encampment. “Better have it out of my sight,” she thinks as she goes into the churchyard of Kirk Patrick. She has no difficulty in finding the place. Other Germans have died and been buried since the camp began. Here they lie in a little square by themselves at the back of the church, with recumbent white marble stones above them inscribed with their foreign names. On the last of the graves, not yet covered, she lays the flowers and then throws the box away. “After all, it’s only human. Nobody can blame me for that.” But do what she will she cannot help thinking of the German boy and of his mother weeping for him in his German home. She has heard the tramp of a horse’s hoofs on the road behind her, and as she returns through the lych-gate the rider draws up and speaks to her. It is the Commandant, who has been taking his evening ride before dinner. He asks what she has been doing and she tells him quite truthfully. He looks serious and says: “It’s natural that you should feel pity for some of these men, but take an old man’s advice, my child, and don’t let it go any further.” Mona tries to follow the Commandant’s counsel, but doing so tears her heart until it bleeds. Even the hours with her father fail to fortify her. The old man is well enough now to sit up in a chair in his bedroom and certain of his neighbouring farmers are permitted to see him. One of them, a babbling fellow, tells him of the sinking of a great passenger liner by an enemy submarine and the loss of more than a thousand lives. The old man breaks into a towering passion. “Those sons of darkness, may the Lord destroy them for ever! May the captain of that submarine never know another night’s sleep as long as he lives! May the cries of the drowning torment his soul until it comes up for judgment, and may it then be damned for ever!”