nd then as if the gun were
taking breath, for an hour or more: a paralysing sound, as if some giant
were drawing a great stick swiftly along iron railings.

"I think I'd better put the light out," he said, going across the room
to where the switch was, and as he went there was a cracking sound in
the window, and a bullet flew across the room and lodged in the
wall....

He switched the light off, and stood for a while in the dark. Then he
opened the door and went out and stood on the landing. The servants were
sitting huddled together on the staircase, nervous looking, indeed, but
not frightened. It seemed to him to be remarkable that these girls
should have kept their nerve as finely as they had. He smiled at them,
as he closed the door behind him.

"They're making a lot of noise, aren't they?" he said.

"Isn't it awful, sir?" one of them answered.

He did not speak of the bullet which had come into the room. "It must
have been a stray," he thought, "and there's no sense in upsetting
them!"

"The soldiers are firing across the Green," he said aloud, "at the
College of Surgeons. I think we're safe enough here, but I'd keep away
from the windows!..."

"Yes, sir, we are!"

He went to his room, and sat at the window. At this height it was
unlikely that any stray bullet would come near him. But he could not see
any one. He could hear the wild-fowl crying in the Park ... distinctly,
in the pause of the firing, he could hear a duck's quack-quack....

8

He went to bed, and tried to sleep, but could not. The firing from the
machine-guns was intermittent now, but it still went on, and there was a
continuous crackling of rifle-fire. Several times he got up and looked
out ... he had a curious and persistent desire to see whatever was going
on ... to be in it ... extraordinarily he was anxious not to miss
anything. _He was neither afraid nor aware of the fact that he was not
afraid._ He had simply the sensation that exciting things were
happening, that he wanted to see as much of them as possible, that he
was excited, that his blood was flowing rapidly through his veins, that
there was something hitting the inside of his head, thumping it. Then
when he was tired of straining to see into the darkness, he went back
to bed again, and closed his eyes and tried to sleep. And sometimes he
succeeded in sleeping for a while ... but always the noise of the
machine-guns woke him....

He went to the window when the dawn broke