Finally he seized his hat and went out into the park to see if the populace were really rising.

It was a cold October evening, with a waxing moon, and a wind that was rapidly bringing the dead leaves to earth.

Not a soul was to be seen! Only once the Squire thought he heard the sound of distant guns; and two aeroplanes crossed rapidly overhead sailing into the western sky.

Everywhere the war!--the cursed, cursed obsession of it! For the first time there was a breach in the Squire's defences, which for three years he had kept up almost intact.

He had put literature, and art, and the joys of the connoisseur between himself and the measureless human ill around him.