ding this. I made a step towards it,
and it rose up and became a man armed with a cutlass. I approached
him slowly. He stood silent and motionless, regarding me.

As I drew nearer I perceived he was dressed in clothes as dusty and
filthy as my own; he looked, indeed, as though he had been dragged
through a culvert. Nearer, I distinguished the green slime of ditches
mixing with the pale drab of dried clay and shiny, coaly patches. His
black hair fell over his eyes, and his face was dark and dirty and
sunken, so that at first I did not recognise him. There was a red cut
across the lower part of his face.

"Stop!" he cried, when I was within ten yards of him, and I
stopped. His voice was hoarse. "Where do you come from?" he said.

I thought, surveying him.

"I come from Mortlake," I said. "I was buried near the pit the
Martians made about their cylinder. I have worked my way out and
escaped."

"There is no food about here," he said. "This is my country. All
this hill down to the river, and back to Clapham, and up to the edge
of the common. There is only food for one. Which way are you going?"

I answered slowly.

"I don't know," I said. "I have been buried in the ruins of a
house thirteen or fourteen days. I don't know what has happened."

He looked at me doubtfully, then started, and looked with a changed
expression.

"I've no wish to stop about here," said I. "I think I shall go to
Leatherhead, for my wife was there."

He shot out a pointing finger.

"It is you," said he; "the man from Woking. And you weren't killed
at Weybridge?"

I recognised him at the same moment.

"You are the artilleryman who came into my garden."

"Good luck!" he said. "We are lucky ones! Fancy _you_!" He put out
a hand, and I took it. "I crawled up a drain," he said. "But they
didn't kill everyone. And after they went away I got off towards
Walton across the fields. But---- It's not sixteen days altogether--and
your hair is grey." He looked over his shoulder suddenly. "Only
a rook," he said. "One gets to know that birds have shadows these
days. This is a bit open. Let us crawl under those bushes and talk."

"Have you seen any Martians?" I said. "Since I crawled out----"

"They've gone away across London," he said. "I guess they've got a
bigger camp there. Of a night, all over there, Hampstead way, the sky
is alive with their lights. It's like a great city, and in the glare
you can just see the