did not occur to him until after he had supped on boiled potatoes with a touch of butter, pepper and salt, washed down with water, a drink he abhorred. When it occurred to him, he smote his thigh and was rewarded with a twinge of pain.
He had all Sunday and all Monday in which to lay his plans before the final evacuation, if evacuation there must be. The enemy had miscalculated. He figured it out two or three times over, made sure he was right, and went to bed in his large gaunt bedroom with a sense of triumph.
Between now and Tuesday a great many things might happen.
A great many things were, in fact, happening. Among them, Europe—wire answering wire—was engaged in declaring general War.
Nicky-Nan, stretched in the four-post bed which had been the Old Doctor's, recked nothing of this. But his leg gave him considerable pain that night, He slept soon, but ill, and awoke before midnight to the sound—as it seemed—of sobbing. Something was wrong with the Penhaligon's children? Yet no … the sound seemed to come rather from the chamber where Mr. and Mrs. Penhaligon slept. … It ceased, and he dropped off to sleep again.
Oddly enough he awoke—not having given it a thought before—with a scare of War upon him.
In his dream he had been retracing accurately and in detail a small scene of the previous morning, at the moment quite without significance for him. Limping back from his cliff-patch with a basket of potatoes in one hand and with the other using the shaft of his mattock (or "visgy" in Polpier language) for a walking-staff, as he passed the watch-house he had been vaguely surprised to find coastguardsman Varco on the look-out there with his glass, and halted.
"Hallo, Bill Varco! Wasn't it you here yesterday? Or has my memory lost count 'pon the days o' the week?"
"It's me, right enough," said Varco; "an' no one but Peter Hosken left with me, to take turn an' turn about. They've called the others up to Plymouth."
"But why?" Nicky-Nan had asked: and the coastguardsman had responded:
"You can put two an' two together, neighbour. Add 'em up as you please."
The scene and the words, repeated through his dream, came back now very clearly to him.
"But when a man's in pain and nervous," he told himself, "the least little thing bulks big in his mind." War? They couldn't really mean it. … That scare had come and had passed, almost a score of times. … Well, suppose it was War? … that again might be the saving of him. Folks mightn't be able to serve Ejectment Orders in time of War. … Besides, now he came to think of it, back in the week there had been some panic in the banks, and some talk of a law having been passed by which debts couldn't be recovered in a hurry. And, anyway, Mr. Pamphlett had forgotten about Bank Holiday. There was no hurry before Tuesday …
Nicky-Nan dropped off again into a sleep punctuated by twinges of pain.
Towards dawn, as the pain eased, his slumber grew deeper and undisturbed. He was awakened by—What?
At first it seemed to be the same sound of sobbing to which he had listened early in the night. Then, with a start, he knew it to be something quite different—an impatient knocking at the foot of his bed-chamber stairs.
Nicky-Nan shuffled out of bed, opened his door, and peered down the stairway.
"Who's there?" he challenged. "And what's your business? Hullo!"—catching sight of Bill Varco, coastguardsman, on the flat below—"the house afire? Or what brings you?"
"The Reserves are called out," answered up Bill Varco. "You'll get your paper later. But the Chief Officer's here from Troy with a little fellow from the Customs there, and I be sent round with first news. I've two dozen yet to warn … In the King's name! An' there'll be a brake waiting by the bridge-end at ten-thirty. If War isn't declared, it mighty soon will be. Take notice!"
Bill Varco disappeared, sharp on the word. Nicky-Nan paused a moment, hobbled back to bed and sat on the edge of it, steadying himself, yet half-awake.
"It's some trick of Pamphlett's to get me out," he decided, and went downstairs cautiously.
CHAPTER III.
HOW THE MEN WENT.
In the passage he found Mrs. Penhaligon standing, alone, rigid as a statue. By her attitude she seemed to be listening. Yet she had either missed to hear or, hearing, had missed to understand Varco's call up the stairs. At Nicky-Nan's footstep she turned, with a face white and set.
"Sam's got to go," she said. Her lips twitched.
"Nonsense, woman! Some person's playin' a trick 'pon the town."
"They start from the bridge at ten-thirty. There's no trick about it. Go an' see for yourself." She motioned with her hand.
Nicky-Nan limped to the porch and peeked out (as they say at Polpier). Up the street the women stood clacking the news just as though it were a week-day and the boats had brought in a famous haul. Feminine gossip in Polpier is not conducted in groups, as the men conduct theirs on the Quay. By tradition each housewife takes post on her own threshold-slate, and knits while she talks with her neighbours to right and left and across the road; thus a bit of news, with comment and embellishment zigzags from door to door through the town like a postal delivery. To-day being Sunday, the women had no knitting; but it was observable that while Mrs. Trebilcock, two doors away, led the chorus as usual, her hands moved as though plying imaginary needles: and so did the hands of Sarah Jane Johns over the way.
Down by the bridge-end two men in uniform sat side by side on the low parapet, sorting out a small pile of blue papers. They were Mr. Irons, the chief officer of Coastguard at Troy, and a young custom-house officer—a stranger to Nicky-Nan. The morning sunlight played on their brass buttons and cap-rims.
Nicky-Nan withdrew his head hastily.
"Where's Sam?" he asked.
"Gone down to Billy Bosistow's to fetch his sea-boots."
"I don't follow 'ee." Nicky-Nan rubbed his unshaven jaw with two fingers. "Is the world come to its end, then, that Billy Bosistow keeps open shop on a Sunday mornin'?"
"'Tisn' like that at all. … You see, Sam's a far-seein' man, or I've tried to make him so. I reckon there's no man in Polpier'll turn out in a kit smellin' stronger of camphor, against the moth. Twice this week I've had it out an' brushed it, fingerin' (God help me) the clothes an' prayin' no shell to strike en, here or there. … Well, an' last autumn, bein' up to Plymouth, he bought an extry pair of sea-boots, Yarmouth-made, off some Stores on the Barbican, an' handed 'em over to Billy to pickle in some sort o' grease that's a secret of his own to make the leather supple an' keep it from perishin'. He've gone down to fetch 'em; an' there's no Sabbath-breakin' in a deed like that, when a man's country calls en."
"'Tis terrible sudden, all this," said Nicky-Nan, ruminating.
"'Tis worse than sudden. Here we be, with orders to clear out before Michaelmas: and how be I to do that, with my man away? Think of all the great lerrupin' furnicher to be shifted an' (what's harder) stowed in a pokey little cottage that wasn' none too big for Aun' Bunney when
