the little band of ambiguous roughs, who were drinking in the tap-room
and discussing matrimony and Bill's affection in a facetious but envious
manner, with a casually held but carefully reloaded revolver, and
an invitation to join what he called, I regret to say, a "Vigilance
Committee" under his direction. "It's wanted about 'ere, and some of us
are gettin' it up." He presented himself as one having friends outside,
though indeed, he had no friends at all in the world but Edna and her
aunt and two female cousins.

There was a quick but entirely respectful discussion of the situation.
They thought him a lunatic who had tramped into, this neighbourhood
ignorant of Bill. They desired to temporise until their leader came.
Bill would settle him. Some one spoke of Bill.

"Bill's dead, I jest shot 'im," said Bert. "We don't need reckon with
'IM. 'E's shot, and a red-'aired chap with a squint, 'E'S shot. We've
settled up all that. There ain't going to be no more Bill, ever. 'E'd
got wrong ideas about marriage and things. It's 'is sort of chap we're
after."

That carried the meeting.

Bill was perfunctorily buried, and Bert's Vigilance Committee (for so it
continued to be called) reigned in his stead.

That is the end of this story so far as Bert Smallways is concerned.
We leave him with his Edna to become squatters among the clay and oak
thickets of the Weald, far away from the stream of events. From that
time forth life became a succession of peasant encounters, an affair of
pigs and hens and small needs and little economies and children, until
Clapham and Bun Hill and all the life of the Scientific Age became to
Bert no more than the fading memory of a dream. He never knew how the
War in the Air went on, nor whether it still went on. There were rumours
of airships going and coming, and of happenings Londonward. Once or
twice their shadows fell on him as he worked, but whence they came or
whither they went he could not tell. Even his desire to tell died out
for want of food. At times came robbers and thieves, at times came
diseases among the beasts and shortness of food, once the country was
worried by a pack of boar-hounds he helped to kill; he went through many
inconsecutive, irrelevant adventures. He survived them all.

Accident and death came near them both ever and again and passed them
by, and they loved and suffered and were happy, and she bore him many
children--eleven children--one after the other, of whom onl