eir journey,
Buck fell, for the first time in his life, perhaps, into a kind of
philosophical reverie, for men of his type are always made kindly, and
as it were melancholy, by success.

"I am sorry for poor old Wayne, I really am," he thought. "He spoke up
splendidly for me at that Council. And he blacked old Barker's eye
with considerable spirit. But I don't see what a man can expect when
he fights against arithmetic, to say nothing of civilisation. And what
a wonderful hoax all this military genius is! I suspect I've just
discovered what Cromwell discovered, that a sensible tradesman is the
best general, and that a man who can buy men and sell men can lead and
kill them. The thing's simply like adding up a column in a ledger. If
Wayne has two hundred men, he can't put two hundred men in nine
places at once. If they're ousted from Pump Street they're flying
somewhere. If they're not flying past the church they're flying past
the Works. And so we have them. We business men should have no chance
at all except that cleverer people than we get bees in their bonnets
that prevent them from reasoning properly--so we reason alone. And so
I, who am comparatively stupid, see things as God sees them, as a vast
machine. My God, what's this?" and he clapped his hands to his eyes
and staggered back.

Then through the darkness he cried in a dreadful voice--

"Did I blaspheme God? I am struck blind."

"What?" wailed another voice behind him, the voice of a certain
Wilfred Jarvis of North Kensington.

"Blind!" cried Buck; "blind!"

"I'm blind too!" cried Jarvis, in an agony.

"Fools, all of you," said a gross voice behind them; "we're all blind.
The lamps have gone out."

"The lamps! But why? where?" cried Buck, turning furiously in the
darkness. "How are we to get on? How are we to chase the enemy? Where
have they gone?"

"The enemy went--" said the rough voice behind, and then stopped
doubtfully.

"Where?" shouted Buck, stamping like a madman.

"They went," said the gruff voice, "past the Gas Works, and they've
used their chance."

"Great God!" thundered Buck, and snatched at his revolver; "do you
mean they've turned out--"

But almost before he had spoken the words, he was hurled like a stone
from catapult into the midst of his own men.

"Notting Hill! Notting Hill!" cried frightful voices out of the
darkness, and they seemed to come from all sides, for the men of North
Kensington, unacquainted with the road, ha