But in the main these young men hung back just because they were interested; because, being interested, they were shy.  This camp spoke, or should speak, to them:  its business, its proper meaning, could only be for them.  They could not lay full account with the feeling.  But these old men conning the gear and shaking heads so wisely—­these middle-aged Sabbath couples pacing around and hanging on heel to wonder how the soldiers packed themselves at night into quarters so narrow, or advancing and peering among utensils of cookery—­most of all the young women giggling while they wondered at this, that, or the’ other,—­all were impertinent to the scene.  Whatever War signified, it was a mystery for men, and for young men.

The crowd thinned towards five o’clock, which is Polpier’s Sunday hour for tea.  On a tussock of thyme above Nicky-Nan’s freshly cleared patch—­the very tussock on which Corporal Sandercock had rested that morning—­young Obed Pearce, the farmer’s son, sat and sucked at a pipe of extinct tobacco.  Hunger of heart had dragged him down to have a look at the camp:  then, coming in full sight of it, he had halted as before the presence of something holy, to which he dared approach no nearer.

He had arrived somewhat late in the afternoon, as the thick of the crowd was dispersing.  He had no young woman to bring with him, to allay her curiosity.  Farmers’ sons marry late, and are deliberate in choosing.  It is the traditional rule.  Young fishermen, on the other hand, claim their sweethearts early and settle down to a long probation of walking-out, waiting their turn while, by process of nature, old people die and cottages fall empty.

Such is economic law in Polpier:  and in accordance with it young Obed Pearce sat and drew at his pipe alone:  whereas when young Seth Minards, by two years his junior, came along at a slow walk with hands deep in his trouser-pockets and no maiden on his arm or by his side, Obed felt no incongruity in challenging him.

“Hullo, young Seth!  Not found a maid yet?”

“No:  nor likely to.”  Young Seth halted.  If he had not found a damsel it was not for lack of good looks.  He had a face for a Raphael to paint; the face of a Stephen or a Sebastian; gloomed over just now, as he halted with his shoulders to the sunset.  “I can’t think o’ such things in these times, Mr Obed.”

“Nor me,” said the farmer’s son, discovering that his pipe was out and feeling in his pocket for a box of matches.

“There’s no hurry for you, Mr Obed.”  “Isn’t there? . . .  Well, I suppose not, thank goodness!  Here, take a fill o’ baccy an’ tell me what you think of it.  I mean, o’ course”—­with a jerk of his hand towards the camp—­“what you think o’ that there?”

“I wish I could tell ’ee offhand,” answered Seth after a pause, carefully filling his pipe.  “I was puzzlin’ it over as I came along.”

“I see nothing to puzzle, for a man placed as you be,” said Obed, drawing hard on his pipe.  “If you had a father and a mother, now, both draggin’ hard on your coat-tails—­My God!” he broke off, staring at the sappers moving on the hillside.  “What wouldn’t I give to be like any o’ those?”