She made one last quest round the house before she started, and found that she had overlooked nothing.  It began to mist as soon as she had skirted Vegg’s Heath, where Wynn used to descend—­it seemed to her that she could almost hear the beat of his propellers overhead, but there was nothing to see.  She hoisted her umbrella and lunged into the blind wet till she had reached the shelter of the empty village.  As she came out of Mr. Kidd’s shop with a bottle full of paraffin in her string shopping-bag, she met Nurse Eden, the village nurse, and fell into talk with her, as usual, about the village children.  They were just parting opposite the ‘Royal Oak,’ when a gun, they fancied, was fired immediately behind the house.  It was followed by a child’s shriek dying into a wail.

‘Accident!’ said Nurse Eden promptly, and dashed through the empty bar, followed by Mary.  They found Mrs. Gerritt, the publican’s wife, who could only gasp and point to the yard, where a little cart-lodge was sliding sideways amid a clatter of tiles.  Nurse Eden snatched up a sheet drying before the fire, ran out, lifted something from the ground, and flung the sheet round it.  The sheet turned scarlet and half her uniform too, as she bore the load into the kitchen.  It was little Edna Gerritt, aged nine, whom Mary had known since her perambulator days.

‘Am I hurted bad?’ Edna asked, and died between Nurse Eden’s dripping hands.  The sheet fell aside and for an instant, before she could shut her eyes, Mary saw the ripped and shredded body.

‘It’s a wonder she spoke at all,’ said Nurse Eden.  ’What in God’s name was it?’

‘A bomb,’ said Mary.

‘One o’ the Zeppelins?’

’No.  An aeroplane.  I thought I heard it on the Heath, but I fancied it was one of ours.  It must have shut off its engines as it came down.  That’s why we didn’t notice it.’

‘The filthy pigs!’ said Nurse Eden, all white and shaken.  ’See the pickle I’m in!  Go and tell Dr. Hennis, Miss Postgate.’  Nurse looked at the mother, who had dropped face down on the floor.  ’She’s only in a fit.  Turn her over.’

Mary heaved Mrs. Gerritt right side up, and hurried off for the doctor.  When she told her tale, he asked her to sit down in the surgery till he got her something.

‘But I don’t need it, I assure you,’ said she.  ’I don’t think it would be wise to tell Miss Fowler about it, do you?  Her heart is so irritable in this weather.’

Dr. Hennis looked at her admiringly as he packed up his bag.

‘No.  Don’t tell anybody till we’re sure,’ he said, and hastened to the ‘Royal Oak,’ while Mary went on with the paraffin.  The village behind her was as quiet as usual, for the news had not yet spread.  She frowned a little to herself, her large nostrils expanded uglily, and from time to time she muttered a phrase which Wynn, who never restrained himself before his womenfolk, had applied to the enemy.  ’Bloody pagans!  They are bloody pagans.  But,’ she continued, falling back on the teaching that had made her what she was, ’one mustn’t let one’s mind dwell on these things.’