ean trickiness of her trial, the refusal to let facts be known, and
then the cold-blooded murder of a brave English woman at 2 a.m. on a
Sunday morning in a prison yard!

It is too awful to think about. She was not even technically a spy, but
had merely assisted some soldiers to get away because she thought they
were going to be shot. A rumour reached the American and Spanish
Legations that she had been condemned and was to be shot at once, and
they instantly rang up on the telephone to know if this was true. They
were informed by the Military Court which had tried and condemned her
that the verdict would not be pronounced till three days later. But the
two Legations, still not satisfied, protested that they must be allowed
to visit the prisoner. This was refused.

The English chaplain was at last permitted to enter the prison, and he
saw Miss Cavell, and gave her the Sacrament. She said she was happy to
die for her country. They led her out into the prison yard to stand
before a firing-party of soldiers, but on her way there she fainted, and
an officer took out his revolver and shot her through the head.

* * * * *

Petrograd! the stage of romance, and the subject of dazzling pictures,
is one of the most commonplace towns I have ever been in. It has its one
big street--the Nevski Prospect--where people walk and shop as they do
in Oxford Street, and it has a few cathedrals and churches, which are
not very wonderful. The roadways are a mass of slush and are seldom
swept; and there are tramways, always crowded and hot, and many rickety
little victorias with damp cushions, in which one goes everywhere. Even
in the evening we go out in these; and the colds in the head which
follow are chronic.

The English colony seems to me as provincial as the rest of Petrograd.
The town and its people disappoint me greatly. The Hotel Astoria is a
would-be fashionable place, and there is a queer crowd of people
listening to the band and eating, as surely only in Russia they can eat.
It is all wrong in war-time, and I hate being one of the people here.

N.B.--Write "Miss Wilbraham" as soon as possible, and write it in gusts.
Call one chapter "The Diners," and try to convey the awful solemnity of
meals--the grave young men with their goblets of brandy, in which they
slowly rotate ice, the waiter who hands the bowl where the ice is thrown
when the brandy is cool enough, and then the final gulp, with a nose