"So it _is_ Sunday!" he exclaimed. "I began to think we must have
mistaken the day! I can't understand what's the matter. Nobody's here
except ourselves. What's becomes of Stevens?"

It was certainly an unprecedented circumstance to find choir,
congregation, organist, organ-blower, bell-ringer and verger all
conspicuous by their absence. Mr. James went to the cottages near to
make inquiries as to the cause. The first was locked up, but by knocking
long and loudly at the door of the second, he at last succeeded in
rousing Jacob Johnson, a deaf old man of eighty-three.

"Nobody come to church!" he repeated, when after some difficulty and
much shouting the situation had been explained: "Well, 'tain't likely
there should be! I'm told there's a German bomb there, one of the
dangerous sort for going off. Some men brought it yesterday in a motor
car. Spies of the Kaiser, they were. It may explode any minute, they
say, and wreck the church and everything near. The Greenwoods next door
locked up the house, and went to their aunt's in the village. My
daughter came over here asking me to go home with her, but I said I'd
stay and risk it. At eighty-three one doesn't care to move!"

"Where is this bomb?" asked Mr. James.

"In a pew nigh the old monument, so I'm told." At this juncture Jack
Cassidy, who when the church was first found to be locked had
volunteered to run back to the Vicarage and fetch the Vicar's own key,
now arrived after a record sprint.

"Give me a bucket of water, and I'll go and investigate," said Mr.