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"Your Dad's in heaven," she soothed.

"How do you know?" asked William.

"Your Dad was one of the Brethren. He died trusting in his Saviour, and passed through the Gate from death into life."

"He went out and never came back," wailed Ruth.

"Don't fret, dearie. You shall go to him one day."

"I döan't want to," cried William. "I'd sooner stay here where it's warm, and anyways you've täaken away my boots."

That night when they were all rolled up on a couple of mattresses placed end to end in the middle of the kitchen floor, Susan told her brothers and sisters that their father truly was dead. Fortified by a good meal and comforted by the red glow of the firelight on the ceiling, increasingly conscious, moreover, of the miles between her and that bramble ditch in the Forest of Worth, she no longer felt afraid to speak of what she had seen. Besides, she was aware that the ignorance of her family might complicate the future if she did not dispel it.

"We're orphans," she told them, "and orphans are always taken care of. We're the same as the fatherless and the widow in the Bible. Maybe the folk here ull keep us for ever and look after us."