Ernie grinned sheepishly.
"Who then?"
"Mr. Burt."
Ernie admitted the charge.
"If you don't trust the country, will you trust Mr. Trupp and me?" the other continued.
Ernie rose with a sigh of relief.
"Thank you kindly, 'm," he said. "That's what I come after."
Ernie went on to Rectory Walk, to find that his mother too had joined the crucified. In the maelstrom of emotion that in those tragic hours was tossing nations and individuals this way and that, the hard woman had been humbled at last. Stripped to the soul, she saw herself a twig hurled about in the sea of circumstance she could no more control than a toy-boat a-float on the Atlantic can order the tides. No longer an isolated atom hard and self-contained, she was one of a herd of bleating sheep being driven by a remorseless butcher to the slaughter-house. And the first question she put to him revealed the extent of the change that had been wrought in her.
"What about Ruth?" she asked.
It was the only occasion on which his mother had named his wife to Ern during his married life.