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      “No indeed,” Mrs. Taylor agreed at once. “Now you say nothin’ aboot it, Miss Vanda, and perhaps they’ll go away.”

      “And if they stay?” Vanda asked.

      The Taylors looked at each other and she realised how frightened they really were and she wondered what she could say to comfort them.

      At the same time she was trying to decide quickly who could turn out these trespassers.

      They had taken possession of an empty house with no one to protect it but two elderly people.

      ‘I suppose,’ she thought, ‘it would be foolish to believe that something like this could never happen especially after a war.’

      Men after risking their lives in fighting for their country had been turned out of the Services without a pension. Even those soldiers who had been wounded or had lost a limb had been granted no compensation.

      Her father had been informed of what was happening in the coastal areas.

      Sailors who had been dismissed from the Navy roamed the countryside in search of food and demanded money from quite humble householders.

      “I can hardly blame them,” Sir Alexander had remarked bitterly. “They won the War, but no one is concerned about them now that there is peace.”

      “Surely the Government should do something,” Vanda had suggested hotly.

      “They should,” her father had replied, “but then I doubt if they will.”

      They had gone on to talk about how the men who had fought came back to find that their jobs had been taken by those who had stayed at home.

      Many men in battle were lost altogether and could never be traced

      Now that hostilities had ended there was no longer the desperate requirement for food that there had been over the last fifteen years.

      And farmers could not now sell their crops in an open market.

      Also a great many aristocratic landowners had suffered financially from the War.

      They could not employ the large numbers of staff they had been able to do before it began.

      Tenants needed their houses repaired, but the landlords did not have the necessary money to spend on doing it.

      It was so difficult to know exactly where England could find purchasers of what goods there were available for sale.

      ‘There must be somebody who could make these men behave,’ Vanda was thinking.

      She felt she could hear again the sharpness of the voices and the rough way they spoke in the wood.

      But she knew that there were few men available in the village who could stand up to them.

      Finally she decided that it was something that she must discuss with her father as soon as she could.

      He would know if there was any Military in the vicinity.

      If the worst came to the worst, they could get soldiers to turn out the intruders who were causing trouble.

      ‘That is what I must do,’ she mused.

      But equally she knew that it would be a mistake to tell the Taylors what she was intending to do about this serious problem.

      “I can see you have been very brave,” she said gently, “but at the same time it is something that cannot continue.”

      “Now don’t you be doin’ anythin’ about this yourself, Miss Vanda,” Taylor said hastily. “If you do, they might ’urt thee and the General.”

      “I doubt that,” Vanda answered. “They can hardly come into the village, bursting into people’s houses and beating up or murdering ordinary citizens.”

      “That’s exactly what these men will do,” Taylor said stubbornly.

      Vanda stared at him.

      “Now you are a sensible man, Taylor,” she said, “and you know as well as I do that we cannot have rough people taking the law into their own hands in this County.”

      “This lot,” Taylor remarked with the jerk of his thumb, “be above the law.”

      Vanda shook her head.

      “Nobody is above the law and no one has the right to interfere with or to threaten ordinary citizens ‒ ”

      “You don’t understand,” Mrs. Taylor interrupted.

      She looked at her husband and went on,

      “You’d better tell who they be.”

      “It’d be a mistake,” Taylor replied sharply.

      Then he added,

      “Well, as Miss Vanda knows so much, she ’ad better understand that unless she keeps ’er lips closed we’ll be in bad trouble.”

      Again Vanda was staring from one to another.

      She was trying to understand exactly why they were so frightened and why they were so determined that she should do nothing.

      She was suddenly afraid that these men might break into the rest of the house.

      Wyn Hall was so beautiful inside and she felt as if every piece of furniture and every picture and all the books in the great library belonged in some way to herself.

      She had known and loved them ever since she was old enough to appreciate such exquisite possessions.

      Wyn Hall had definitely become as familiar to her as her own house and she knew that, if any of it was damaged, it would break her heart.

      Now she thought with horror of the miniatures that hung on the walls in the drawing room.

      The portraits of the Wyns that hung on the beautifully carved stairs and the pictures in the Gallery, which had been added to by every Earl.

      She clasped her hands together.

      “We must protect The Hall from these terrible people,” she asserted. “Supposing they ransack the State rooms and supposing they set the whole place on fire?”

      “They’ll not do that, Miss Vanda,” Taylor said, “so long as we give ’em shelter. But if we tries to then turn ’em out anythin’ might ’appen.”

      “They cannot stay here indefinitely,” Vanda persisted.

      “They’ll go when it suits ’em,” Taylor said. “They just want somewhere to rest and ’ide their ’aul.”

      “Hide their haul?” Vanda repeated. “What do you mean by that? What can they have to hide?”

      They were questions that once again seemed to leave the Taylors silent and fearful.

      In fact Vanda began to think it was ridiculous. Taylor was a well-built man. Why should he be shaking in his shoes when he thought about a few riotous young men who so far had done no harm as far as she knew?

      “Now what I want you to let me do,” she said in a soft voice, “is to talk to my father. You know how clever he is and he has been a soldier all his life.”

      Mrs. Taylor suddenly gave a scream.

      “Soldiers!” she cried. “If soldiers come here they’ll kill us. We’ll both be dead, that’s what we’ll be, Miss Vanda, and it’ll be you who’s done it.”

      Vanda reached out to put her hand on Mrs. Taylor’s

      “Please don’t upset yourself,” she said. “The soldiers will not come here if it frightens you, I can assure you of that, but we have to do something.”

      “There be nothin’ we can do and that be the very truth,” Taylor insisted.

      “Just you go away and forget us,” his

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