Yet, after all, those men had done months and years of labour for the country.  Saying ‘I will not go!’ they had yet gone.  Without a spark of high feeling or conscious self-sacrifice to ease their toil, they had yet, week by week, made the guns and the shells which had saved the armies of England.  When this temporary outbreak was over they would go back and make them again.  And they were tired men—­sallow-faced, and bowed before their time.

But what had this whimsical, accomplished man before her ever done for his country that he should rail like this?  It was difficult after a tiring day to keep scorn and dissent concealed.  They probably showed in her expression, for the Squire turned upon her as she made her remark about the submarines, examining her with a pair of keen eyes.

’Oh, I know very well what you and that fellow Chicksands think about persons like me who endeavour to see things as they are!’—­he smote a chair before him—­’and not as you and our war-party wish them to be.  Well, well—­now then to business.  Who wants to cut my woods—­and what do they offer for them?’

Elizabeth put the papers in front of him.  He turned them over.

’H’m—­they want the Cross Wood—­one of the most beautiful woods in England.  I have spent days there when I was young drawing the trees.  And who’s the idiot’—­he pointed to some marginal notes—­’who is always carping and girding?  “Good forestry” would have done this and not done that.  “Mismanagement”—­“neglect”!  Upon my word, who made this man a judge over me?’

And flushed with wrath, the Squire looked angrily at his secretary.  ’Heavens!’—­thought Elizabeth—­’why didn’t I edit the papers before I showed them?’ But aloud she said with her good-tempered smile—­

’I am afraid I took all those remarks as applying to Mr. Hull.  He was responsible for the woods, wasn’t he?  He told me he was.’

’Nothing of the kind!  In the end the owner is responsible.  This fellow is attacking me!’

Elizabeth said nothing.  She could only wait in hope to see how the large sums mentioned in the contract might work.

’"Maximum price”!  What’s this?—­“Had Mr. Mannering been willing to enter into negotiations with us last year,"’—­the Squire began to read a letter accompanying the draft contract—­’"when we approached him, we should probably have been able to offer him a better price.  But under the scale of prices now fixed by the Government—­“’

The owner of Mannering bounded out of his seat.

’And you actually mean to say that I may not only be forced to sell my woods—­but whether I am forced or not, I can only sell them at the Government price?  Intolerable!—­absolutely intolerable!  Every day that Englishmen put up with these tyrannies is a disgrace to the country!’

‘The country must have artillery waggons and aeroplanes,’ said Elizabeth, softly.  ’Where are we to get the wood?  There are not ships enough to bring it overseas?’