‘Don’t you make any mistake about that, my lad,’ said Mr. Jervase. ‘I’ve got a bit of news for you as will set old England in a blaze within another four-and-twenty hours. And I suppose I’m the only man within five miles that knows it. You mark my words, now, all of you. You’ll remember this night to the last day o’ your lives. This is the 27th March, this is. The twenty-seventh of March in the year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and fifty-four. That’s a date as will stick in your gizzards, my hearties. It’s a date as will stick in old England’s gizzard, and in the Czar of Rooshia’s gizzard, and in the gizzard of Napoleon Three. And you can lay your oath to that, because Jack Jervase told you.’ ‘Why, what’s happened, Mr. Jervase?’ asked the man who had spoken earlier. ‘Happened?’ cried Mr. Jervase. ‘Why, Her Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria has sent a message to her Royal ‘Ouses of Parliament to say as she’s declared war agen the Czar of all the Rooshias. And before a month is over your heads, my lads, there’ll be war amongst the Great Powers of Europe, for the first time in eight-and-thirty years.’ The five men rose to their feet unconsciously in their excitement. They were mere country-side clods, and knew as little of the rights and wrongs of that great Eastern question which had overshadowed the world so long, as the horses they drove about the heavy country lanes or the flocks they herded. But they broke into a cheer. The bringer of the news lifted a hand, and waved them into silence. ‘You’ll have the missus in to know what all that hullaballoo’s about,’ he said, reprovingly: ‘and I don’t want to be bothered until I’ve made a change. Now I’ll tell you what it is, my lads. The Queen wants men, and there isn’t one of you that isn’t fit to go a-soldiering. I just tell you this--if any one of you, or the whole lot of you, see fit to take the Queen’s shilling I’ll put a pound to it for bounty money. Now, you needn’t cheer again,’ he added hastily. As a matter of fact, none of his listeners showed any inclination to cheer. War in the abstract was a thing to cheer about, but war in the concrete--war with its possibilities--thus brought home to each individual mind excited no enthusiasm. ‘You think about that, my lads,’ said the host, distributing a series of smiling nods about him. ‘Old Jack Jervase’s day is over, or he’d be at it again, and so I tell you. It’s many and many a year now since I heard a shot fired in anger, or since I stood on a ship’s deck. But I’ve got the heart for the work still, if I haven’t got the figger. Heigh-ho,’ he went on, with a regretful moan, ‘there’s no room for a pottle-bellied, bald-headed old coot like me atween the decks of a man o’ war. But if I was five-and-twenty years younger, why, God bless my soul, I shouldn’t hesitate a minute!’ The woman he had despatched immediately upon his entrance returned at this instant and coughed behind her hand to indicate her presence.