‘Who’s the revolutionist now?’ he said quietly.  ’What’s the war cost you, Mr. Mannering, compared to what it’s cost me and my pals?  This is the first holiday I’ve had for three years.  Twice I’ve dropped like dead in the shop—­strained heart, says the doctor.  No time to eat!—­no time to sleep!—­come out for an hour, wolf some brandy down and go back again, and then they tell you you’re a drunken brute!  “Shells and guns!” says the Government—­“more shells!—­more guns!—­deliver the goods!” And we’ve delivered ’em.  My two brothers are dead in France.  I shall be “combed” out directly, and a “sniper” will get me, perhaps, three days after I get to the trenches, as he did my young brother.  What then?  Oh, I know, there’s some of us—­the young lads mostly—­who’ve got out of hand, and ’ll give the Government trouble perhaps before they’ve done.  Who can wonder, when you see the beastly towns they come out of, and the life they were reared in!  And none of us are going to stand profiteering, and broken pledges, and that kind of thing!’—­a sudden note of passion rushed into the man’s voice.  ’But after all, when all’s said and done, this is England!’ he turned with a fine, unconscious gesture to the woods and green spaces behind him, and the blue distances of plain—­’and we’re Englishmen—­and it’s touch and go whether England’s going to come out or go under; and if we can’t pay the Huns for what they’ve done in Belgium—­what they’ve done in France!—­what they’ve done to our men on the sea!—­well, it’s a devil’s world!—­and I’d sooner be quit of it, it don’t matter how!’

The man’s slight frame shook under the force of his testimony.  His eyes held the Squire, who was for the moment silenced.  Then the engineer turned on his heel with a laugh: 

’Well, good-day to you, Mr. Mannering.  Go and fasten up your gates!  If I’m for minding D.O.R.A. and winning the war, I’m a good Socialist all the same.  I shall be for making short work with you, when our day comes.’  And touching his hat, he walked rapidly away.

The Squire straightened his shoulders, and looked round to see whether they had been overheard.  But the labourers carrying the hurdles, and Gregson burdened with the coil of wire, had not been listening.  They stood now in a group close to the main gate waiting for their leader.  The Squire walked up to them, picking his way among various articles of furniture, a cradle, some bedding, a trunk or two, which lay scattered in the road in front of the white casemented lodge.  The wife of old Perley, the lodge-keeper, was standing on her doorstep.

’Well, no offence, Muster Mannering, but Perley and me’s going over to my sister’s at Wood End to-night, afore the milingtary come.’  The black-browed elderly woman spoke respectfully but firmly.

‘What silly nonsense have you got into your heads?’ shouted the Squire.  ’You know very well all that’s going to happen is that the County Council are going to send their motor-plough over, and they’ll have to break down the gates to get in, so that the law can settle it.  What’s come to you that you’re all scuttling like a pack of rabbits?  It’s not your skins that’ll pay for it—­it’s mine!’