I spent but one other day in Dorset after my walk out to Tarn Regis, and
then took train in the morning for London.

I believe I have said before that Doctor Wardle, my sister's husband,
was prosperous and popular. The fact made it natural for me to accept my
mother's disposition of her tiny property, which, in a couple of
sentences, she had bequeathed solely to me. My sister had no need of the
hundred and fifty pounds a year that was derived from my mother's little
capital, which had been invested in Canadian securities and was
unaffected by England's losses. Thus I was now possessed of means
sufficient to provide me with the actual necessities of life; and,
though I had not thought of it before, realization of this came to me
while I attended to the winding up of my mother's small affairs,
bringing with it a certain sense of comfort and security.

It was with a strongly hopeful feeling, a sense almost of elation, that
I stepped from the train at Waterloo. My quiet days and nights in Dorset
had taught me something; and, particularly, I had gained much, in
conviction and in hope, from the evening spent by Barebarrow. I cannot
say that I had any definite plans, but I was awake to a genuine sense of
duty to my native land, and that was as strange a thing for me as for a
great majority of my fellow countrymen. I was convinced that a great
task awaited us all, and I determined upon the performance of my part in
it. I suppose I trusted that London would show me the particular form
that my effort should take. Meanwhile, as a convert, the missionary
feeling was strong in me.

I might have made shift to afford better quarters, perhaps, but it was
to my original lodging in Bloomsbury that I drove from Waterloo. Some
few belongings of mine were there, and I entertained a friendly sort of
feeling for my good-hearted but slatternly landlady, and for poor,
overworked Bessie, with her broad, generally smutty face, and lingering
remains of a Dorset accent. The part of London with which I was familiar
had resumed its normal aspect now, and people were going about their
ordinary avocations very much as though England never had been invaded.

But in the north and east of the capital were streets of burned and
blackened houses, and the Epping and Romford districts were one
wilderness of ruins, and of graves; while across East Anglia, from the
coast to the Thames, the trail of the invaders was as the track of a
locust plague, but more t