“_Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott...._” The language is unknown to her, but the tune is familiar; she used to sing it herself when she was in the choir of the Wesleyan Chapel: “_A sure stronghold our God is still...._” The same hymn, the same religion, the same God, the same Saviour, and yet.... How wicked! How stupid! On Christmas morning Mona has finished her work in the dairy when she hears the far-off sound of the church bells in Peel, and looking out over the camp she sees groups of the prisoners (Oskar among them) making their way to the prison chapel. Suddenly, as she thinks, a new thought comes to her. If it is the same religion, why shouldn’t she go to the service? If the guard will permit her to pass, why shouldn’t she? Almost before she is aware of what she is doing she has run upstairs, changed into her chapel clothes, and is crossing the avenue towards the gate of the Third Compound. The camp chapel (half church, half theatre) is a large wooden barn with a stage at one end, no seats on the floor. On the stage, behind a small deal table, the Lutheran pastor, in a black gown, is reading the lesson from his big Bible. On the floor in front of him are five or six hundred men, all standing in lines. They make a pitiful spectacle--some young (almost boys), some elderly (almost old), some wearing good clothes, some in rags, some well shod, some with their naked feet showing through the holes in their worn-out shoes, some with fine clear-cut features, and some with faces degraded by drink and debased by crime. Every eye is on the pastor, and there is no sound in the bare place but the sound of his voice. The silence is broken by the lifting of the latch of a door near to the stage. At the next moment a woman enters. Everybody knows her--it is “the Woman of Knockaloe.” She stands for a moment as if dazed by the eyes that are on her, and then somebody by her side (she knows who it is, although she does not look at him) touches her arm and leads her to a chair, which has been hurriedly brought in from an ante-room and placed in the middle of the front row. When the lesson is finished the pastor gives out a hymn. It is the same hymn as she heard last night, but after the man from the door has stepped forward and played the overture on the harmonium, she finds herself on her feet in the midst of the prisoners. In full, clear, resonant voices the men are singing in their German, when suddenly they become aware that a woman is singing with them in English--the same hymn to the same tune. “_Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott...._” “_A sure stronghold our God is still...._” The voices of the men sink for a moment, as if they are listening, and then, as by one spontaneous impulse, they rise and swell until the place seems to throb with them.