war.  She read much, and what she read, his living contact with men and affairs—­with that endless stream of wounded in particular, which passed through the Carton hospital—­and his graphic talk illumined for her.  Then in the night arose the train of visions; the trenches—­always the trenches; those hideous broken woods of the Somme front, where the blasted soil has sucked the best life-blood of England; those labyrinthine diggings and delvings in a tortured earth, made for the Huntings of Death—­’Death that lays man at his length’—­for panting pursuit, and breathless flight, and the last crashing horror of the bomb, in some hell-darkness at the end of all:—­these haunted her.  Or she saw visions of men swinging from peak to peak above fathomless depths of ice and snow on the Italian front; climbing precipices where the foot holds by miracle, and where not only men but guns must go; or vanishing, whole lines of them, awfully forgotten in the winter snows, to reappear a frozen and ghastly host, with the melting of the spring.

And always, mingled with everything, in the tense night hours—­that slender khaki figure, tearing the leaf from his sketch-book, leaping over the parados,—­falling—­in the No Man’s Land.  But, by day, the obsession of it now often left her.

It was impossible not to enjoy her new home.  Farrell had taken an old Westmorland farm, with its white-washed porch, its small-paned windows outlined in white on the grey walls, its low raftered rooms, and with a few washes of colour—­pure blue, white, daffodil yellow—­had made all bright within, to match the bright spaces of air and light without.  There was some Westmorland oak, some low chairs, a sofa and a piano from the old Manchester house, some etchings and drawings, hung on the plain walls by Farrell himself, with the most fastidious care; and a few—­a very few things—­from his own best stores, which Hester allowed him to ‘house’ with Nelly from time to time—­picture, or pot, or tapestry.  She played watch-dog steadily, not resented by Farrell, and unsuspected by Nelly.  Her one aim was that the stream of Nelly’s frail life should not be muddied by any vile gossip; and she achieved it.  The few neighbours who had made acquaintance with ‘little Mrs. Sarratt’ had, all of them been tacitly, nay eagerly willing, to take their cue from Hester.  To be vouched for by Hester Martin, the ‘wise woman’ and saint of a country-side, was enough.  It was understood that the poor little widow had been commended to the care of William Farrell and his sister, by the young husband whose gallant death was officially presumed by the War Office.  Of course, Mrs. Sarratt, poor child, believed that he was still alive—­that was so natural!  But that hope would die down in time.  And then—­anything might happen!