“I couldn’t help it! I couldn’t help it! God forgive me!” _NINTH CHAPTER_ It is Christmas week again--the last Christmas of the war. Two Swiss doctors, appointed by the warring nations to inspect the Internment Camps throughout Europe, have arrived at Knockaloe. After going the rounds of the five compounds they come to the farm to test the milk. They are pleasant men, and Mona asks them to take tea. Sitting at the table in the kitchen they talk together, not paying much attention to Mona, of the complaints made by the prisoners, particularly by one of them, who had said he had not been able to eat the potatoes provided because they had been full of maggots, whereupon the sergeant of the guard, who had been showing them round, had cried: “Don’t believe a word of it--the man’s a liar,” and then the prisoner had said no more. “I dare say the fellow was lying all right,” says one of the doctors, “but that sergeant is a bit of a beast.” “Is it like that in all the camps--in Germany, for instance?” asks Mona. “Worse there than anywhere. Some of the officers in German camps are barbarians without bowels of compassion for anybody, and some of your British prisoners are living the lives of the damned.” “But that’s the devilish way of war. It seems to make martyrs and heroes of the men who lose by it, and brutes and demons of the men who win.” “Not always, my friend.” “No, not always, thank God!” After that they turn to Mona, congratulating her on the cleanliness of her dairy, and asking her what help she has to keep things going. Being afraid to speak of Oskar, she tells them she is alone. “Wonderful!” says one of them. “But it’s what I always say--one person working with his heart will do more than ten who are working with their hands only.” “It’s the same on the battlefield,” says the other. “And that’s why this country has won the war, and the Germans have lost it.” “Lost it?” says Mona. “Is the war over, then?” “It soon will be, my girl. Your enemy may make a last kick, but the war cannot last much longer.” Mona’s heart leaps up. Can it be possible that the war is coming to an end? Then it will soon be well with her and Oskar. It is not because Oskar is a German, but because the Germans are at war with her own people that her people look black at her. It is war, not race, that is the great obstacle to their love, and when the war is over the obstacle will be gone. “O Lord, stop the war, stop it, stop it,” she prays every night and every morning. There are to be no carols this Christmas, but special services are to be held in the camp on Christmas Day, and a great Lutheran preacher is coming to conduct them. On Christmas Eve Mona is carrying a bowl of oats to a young bull she has put out on the mountain, when she hears the singing of a hymn in the prison chapel and she stops to listen. It must be the prisoner-choir practising for to-morrow’s service, and it must be Oskar who is playing the harmonium.