Mona, too, is waiting. She is sitting up on her bed, half-covered by the counterpane. At one moment she remembers Robbie’s watch and thinks of taking it out of the drawer and winding it up and putting it on, but something says “Not yet.” Although Peel church is nearly a mile away, she tells herself that on this silent night she will hear the striking of the clock. She thinks of the battlefront in France. The truce of God is there too. No booming of cannon, no shrieking of shells, only the low murmur of a sea of men in the underground trenches and the bright moon over the white waste about them. Thank God! Thank God! At a quarter to twelve she is up again and at the window. A dim, mysterious, divine majesty seems to have come down on all the troubled world. The moon is shining full on her face. She hears marching on the crinkling snow--the band of the guard are crossing the avenue to take up the place assigned to them on the officers’ tennis-court. Behind them there is the shuffling of irregular feet--her farm-hands are following. Then, through the thin air comes the silvery sound of the clock of Peel church striking midnight, and then, clear and distinct, from the guards’ band the first bar of “The Feast of Stephen.” “_When the snow lay on the ground...._” After that another bar of it from the Third Compound (Oskar must be conducting): “_Deep and crisp and even...._” Then comes another bar from the First Compound, and then another and another from the distant Compounds Four and Five. After that there is a second carol: “_Noël, Noël, born is the King of Israel...._” Then another carol and another, all played like the first, and finally, verse by verse, from near and far, the hymn she had selected: “_Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom._” Mona is crying. Now she understands herself--why she suggested this to Oskar and why Oskar has carried it out. If only peace would come the barrier that divides them would be broken down! God send it! God send it! Her breath on the window-pane has frosted the cold glass, but she is sure she sees somebody coming towards the house. It is a man, and he is stumbling along, half doubled up as if drunk or wounded. He is making for the front door. Trembling with half-conscious apprehension of the truth, Mona runs downstairs to open it. The man is Oskar Heine. By the light of the lamp she had left burning on the table she sees him. He is clutching with one hand a bough of the trammon tree that grows by the porch, and in the other he holds a sheet of blue paper. His cap is pushed back from his forehead, which is wet with perspiration, his eyes are wild, and his face is ashen. “May I come in?” “Indeed yes.” He comes into the house, never having done so before, and drops heavily into the old man’s seat by the fire, which is dying out. “What is it?” she asks. “Look,” he says, and hands her the paper. “It has just come. The post was late to-night.” His voice seems to be dying out also.