“You’re hard, woman, you’re hard,” he says. FOOTNOTE: [1] Pronounced Knock-ā-loe. _SECOND CHAPTER_ Christmas has gone; the spring has come; the seed is in the ground; the cattle are out on the hill after their long winter imprisonment in the cow-houses; but the war is still going on and Robbie has not yet returned home. It is a bright spring morning. Mona is coming back from Peel in her shandry when she sees three gentlemen walking over the farm with her father, one of them in officer’s uniform, the other two in silk hats and light overcoats. As she turns in at the gate she sees a fourth gentleman come down from the hillside and join them in the lane. He wears a Norfolk jacket, has a gun under his arm and two or three dogs at his heels. Mona recognizes the fourth gentleman as their landlord, and as she drives slowly past she hears her father say to him: “But what about the farm, sir, when the war is over?” “Don’t trouble about that,” says the landlord. “You are here for life, Robert--you and your children.” Mona puts up her horse and goes into the house, and when the gentlemen have gone her father comes in to her. With a halting embarrassment he tells her what has happened. One of the gentlemen had been the Governor of the island, the strangers had been officials from the Home Office. “It seems the Government in London have come to your opinion, girl.” “What’s that?” says Mona. “That the civilian Germans must be interned.” “Interned? What does that mean?” “Shut up in camps to keep them out of mischief.” “Prison camps?” “That’s so.” “Serve them right, the spies and sneaks! But why did the gentlemen come here?” “The Governor brought them. He thinks Knockaloe is the best place in the island for an internment camp.” Mona is aghast. “What? Those creatures! Are we to be turned out of the farm for the like of them?” “Not that exactly,” says the old man, and he explains the plan that had been proposed to him by the gentlemen from London. He and his family are to remain in the farm-house and keep that part of the pasture land that lies on the hill-side in order to provide the fresh milk that will be required for the camp. Mona is indignant. “Do you mean that we are to work to keep alive those Germans whose brothers are killing our boys in France? Never! Never in this world.” Her father must refuse. Of course he must. The farm is theirs--for as long as the lease lasts, anyway. “Tell the Governor to find some other place for his internment camp.” The old man explains that he has no choice. What the Government wants in a time of war it must have. “Very well,” says Mona; “let them have the farm and we’ll go elsewhere.” The old man tells her that he must remain. He is practically conscripted. “They don’t want _me_, though, do they?” “Well, yes, they do. They are not for having other women about the camp, but under the circumstances they must have one woman anyway.” “It won’t be me, then. Not likely!”