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There were several disconcerting factors that morning. One of them was that the few ex-servicemen in the village seemed more apprehensive than anyone else. It was cold and sunny after the rain, but the sense of impending tragedy was suffocating. Now, when sensational and sometimes terrible things actually happen every day and no one takes any of them too seriously, the peculiar quality of the wretchedness of that morning is hard to recapture and define; but the whole thing is analogous with the way one feels when one first realises that someone one loves is going to die and the way one feels when they do.

It was Cooee, my oldest student friend, who lived with us, who raised the question of the animals, and that shook everyone in the place. Norry was appalled, I remember. We looked it up, but Me's handbook said nothing about animals.

Some English folk make too much fuss about their beasts, but there are degrees in these things, and the man who spends his whole life tending animals is a funny sort of chap if he is not fond of them. Norry's old pony Kit was over thirty at the time and not exactly valuable, but the idea of her being suffocated or burned and no drench of his brewing being able to save her shook him badly, while Cooee was very nearly demoralised altogether. It was not only the pet animals but all the stock. The cows might escape in the meadows, but what about the pigs in the backyards?