Our backs were sore with bending over the peats. We had grown soft during our rainy days ‘idleness and we rested from working on the 19th of June. We slept in the sun, we wakened to inquire at each other, with many a supposition, how the peopled world had fared. We were both oppressed with a sense of crisis. The things we had left and fled to escape were never out of our minds since we decided to go to our house. Sometimes I said, forgetting the guns we heard,’ Suppose there was never any war, suppose we ran away from the shadow of a fear—’ But it did not require Terry’s eyes to persuade me of what I dreaded to believe.

There have been times when our moods owed their birth to the weather; often when we are dull a change of weather instructs us in the cause of our lethargy. But on this sweet day, untroubled by wind or cloud, we were ill at ease for no cause save the anxiety of our minds; when we slept it was to waken with another question on our lips, a new imagining half-formed and dangerous in our heads.

‘Another day past,’ I said when night came. ‘Another step towards the grave.’

‘Why should I try to hide and make pretence?’ Terry said suddenly. ‘I’m half-distracted with anxiety, Hugh, and every moment a new dread pushes out the old—oh, Hugh! what dreadful things may have happened while we’ve been here.’

‘I could go alone,’ I said slowly. ‘Who knows what has chanced?’

‘I’m going too,’ she said.

‘We’re lucky to have each other,’ I murmured. ‘What a poor wavering fool I’d be lacking you, Terry.’

‘I’m glad you’re happy with me,’ she answered gently.

Before we fell asleep for the night, after we had turned a dozen times in our hammock, and lain still for minutes by force of will, to keep from waking the wakeful other, I sat up and whispered, ‘Terry!’

‘Hugh! are you waking? I’ve been longing to speak to you but I was loath to disturb you.’

‘I can’t sleep, Terry.’

‘We slept too much through the day.’

‘It’s not that. My head won’t stop thinking—’

‘Och, sleep, my bairn, my dear,’ she bade me. ‘What is it troubles you, then?’

‘Vain thoughts,’ I said heavily.

I felt her hand touch my face lightly.

‘Hush you and don’t fret,’ she murmured, ‘sleep and forget pain; what is it troubles you? sleep, and be still.’

She began to sing, in her small thin voice:

Hush a ba birdie, croom, croom,

Hush a ba birdie, croom,

The sheep are gane tae the silver wood,

And the cows are gane tae the broom, the broom.

Hush a ba birdie, croom, croom,

Hush a ba birdie, bye,

The bells are ringing, the birds are singing,

The wild deer come galloping by.