The distance was short, and she left exact word where she could be found.  As she climbed the narrow lane leading to the farm, she presently heard a motor approaching.  The walls enclosing the lane left barely room to pass.  She could only scramble hurriedly up a rock which had been built into the wall, and hold on to a young tree growing from it.  The motor which was large and luxurious passed slowly, and in the car she saw two young men, one pale and sickly-looking, wrapped in a great-coat though the day was stuffily warm:  the other, the driver, a tall and stalwart fellow, who threw Nelly a cold, unfriendly look as they went by.  Who could they be?  The road only led to the farm, and when Nelly had last visited Mrs. Grayson, a week before, she and her old husband and a granddaughter of fourteen had been its only inmates.

Mrs. Grayson received her with a smile.

‘Aye, aye, Mrs. Sarratt, coom in.  Yo’re welcome.’

But as Nelly entered the flagged kitchen, with its joints of bacon and its bunches of dried herbs, hanging from the low beamed ceiling, its wide hob grate, its dresser, table and chairs of old Westmorland oak, every article in it shining with elbow-grease,—­she saw that Mrs. Grayson looked particularly tired and pale.

‘Yo mun ha’ passed them in t’ lane?’ said the farmer’s wife wearily, when the flowers had been admired and put in water, and Nelly had been established in the farmer’s own chair by the fire, while his wife insisted on getting an early cup of tea.

‘Who were they, Mrs. Grayson?’

’Well, they’re nobbut a queer soart, Mrs. Sarratt—­and I’d be glad to see t’ back on ’em.  They’re “conscientious objectors”—­that’s what they are—­an my husband coom across them in Kendal toother day.  He’d finished wi t’ market, and he strolled into the room at the Town Hall, where the men were coomin’ in—­yo know—­to sign on for the war.  An’ he got talkin’ wi’ these two lads, who were lookin’ on as he was.  And they said they was “conscientious objectors”—­and wouldn’t fight not for nothing nor nobody.  But they wouldn’t mind doing their bit in other ways, they said.  So John he upped and said—­would they coom and help him with his second crop o’ hay—­you know we’ve lost nearly all our men, Mrs. Sarratt—­and they said they would—­and that very evening he brought ‘em along.  And who do you think they are?’

Nelly could not guess; and Mrs. Grayson explained that the two young men were the wealthy sons of a wealthy Liverpool tradesman and were starting a branch of their father’s business in Kendal.  They had each of them a motor, and apparently unlimited money.  They had just begun to be useful in the hay-making—­’But they wouldn’t touch the stock—­they wouldn’t kill anything—­not a rat!  They wouldn’t even shoo the birds from the oats!  And last night one of them was took ill—­and I must go and sit up with him, while his brother fetched the big car from Kendal to take him home.  And there was