Five Oaks Farm was of no great size, and had been the property of the Trenchard family for generations.  The present owner, a hale old yeoman whose features were framed for perennial cheerfulness, had latterly looked rather careworn.  A year before the war an epidemic among his cattle had caused him heavy losses.  Both his sons had joined the Army and were now fighting in France, a constant source of anxiety.  Being short-handed, he was glad enough to avail himself of the voluntary help of the two strapping schoolboys of seventeen, and they had already, though only three days at the farm, firmly established themselves in the good graces of both host and hostess by their readiness to turn their hands to any kind of work.