over the
country that day, millions read as I read, and came round into line
with me, under the same magnetic spell, came round--how did we say
it?--Ah!--"to face the foe."

The comet had been driven into obscurity overleaf. The column
headed "Distinguished Scientist says Comet will Strike our Earth.
Does it Matter?" went unread. "Germany"--I usually figured this
mythical malignant creature as a corseted stiff-mustached Emperor
enhanced by heraldic black wings and a large sword--had insulted
our flag. That was the message of the New Paper, and the monster
towered over me, threatening fresh outrages, visibly spitting
upon my faultless country's colors. Somebody had hoisted a British
flag on the right bank of some tropical river I had never heard of
before, and a drunken German officer under ambiguous instructions
had torn it down. Then one of the convenient abundant natives
of the country, a British subject indisputably, had been shot in
the leg. But the facts were by no means clear. Nothing was clear
except that we were not going to stand any nonsense from Germany.
Whatever had or had not happened we meant to have an apology for,
and apparently they did not mean apologizing.

"HAS WAR COME AT LAST?"

That was the headline. One's heart leapt to assent. . . .

There were hours that day when I clean forgot Nettie, in dreaming
of battles and victories by land and sea, of shell fire, and
entrenchments, and the heaped slaughter of many thousands of men.

But the next morning I started for Checkshill, started, I remember,
in a curiously hopeful state of mind, oblivious of comets, strikes,
and wars.

Section 5

You must understand that I had no set plan of murder when I walked
over to Checkshill. I had no set plan of any sort. There was a
great confusion of dramatically conceived intentions in my head,
scenes of threatening and denunciation and terror, but I did not mean
to kill. The revolver was to turn upon my rival my disadvantage
in age and physique. . . .

But that was not it really! The revolver!--I took the revolver
because I had the revolver and was a foolish young lout. It was a
dramatic sort of thing to take. I had, I say, no plan at all.

Ever and again during that second trudge to Checkshill I was
irradiated with a novel unreasonable hope. I had awakened in the
morning with the hope, it may have been the last unfaded trail of
some obliterated dream, that after all Nettie might relent toward me,
th