ussing the deaths in their families.

The noise of gunfire was coming nearer, shaking the ground like the
uneven tread of a drunken giant. Sarah Brown concentrated on an evening
newspaper, busily reading again and again one of those columns of
confidential man-to-man advertisement, which everybody reads with
avidity while determining the more never to buy the article advertised.
But presently the fidgeting hands of Richard caught her eye, and she
looked at him. He was sitting next to his mother on a stone step. He
seemed to be in a quieter mood and attempted no manifestation. Sarah
Brown thought he was suppressing excitement, however, and indeed he
presently said: "I say, won't it be fun lying about all this to
posterity and Americans, and other defenceless innocents."

Opposite to them, on two campstools, sat a young bridling mother of
fifty, with her old hard daughter of sixteen or so. Hard was that
daughter in every way; you would have counted her age in winters, not in
summers, so obviously untender were her years. An iron plait of hair lay
for about six inches down her spine; her feet and ankles made the
campstool on which she sat, looking pathetically ethereal. Of such stuff
as this is the backbone of England made, which is perhaps why the
backbone of England sometimes seems so sadly inflexible.

There was a screeching noise outside, followed by an incredible crash.
It seemed to cleave a bottomless abyss between one second and the next,
so that one seemed to be conscious for the first time in an astonished
and astonishing world.

Lady Arabel said: "Boys will be boys, of course I know, but really this
is going a little too far. Pinehurst's one hobby was his windows."

The campstooled mother gave a luxurious little shriek as soon as the
crash was safely over. "The villains," she said kittenishly. "Aiming at
places of worship as usual. I am absolutely paralysed with terror. Mary,
darling, I don't believe you turned a hair."

"Pas un cheval," replied her firm daughter, in not unnatural error. One
could easily see that she was beloved at home, and one wondered why.

The sound of the guns seemed only a negative form of sound after the
bomb, and clearly above the firing could be heard a howl. The Vicar's
dog, still howling, ran into the crypt.

"RUPERT!" said the Vicar, in a terrible voice, interrupting himself in
the middle of a cheering platitude. But he had no time to say anything
more, for behind Rupert came