mind, you’ll go on? More babies, soon make up the losses? Have another merry old war soon, sooner the better.... O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Thank God I have no son, O Absalom, my son, my son! * * * * * Winterbourne nodded uneasily asleep. He started awake as the train slowed down at London Bridge, and not at Waterloo. Where am I? Railway station. Oh, of course, on a draft going out to France.... The draft were turned out at London Bridge, and collected in two ranks on the platform, yawning, stretching and adjusting their equipment. The draft conducting officer, a mild, brown-eyed young man on home service after being wounded, explained that they had nearly three hours to wait. Would they like to go to a Soldiers’ Canteen and get some food? “Yes, Sir!” They marched through the empty muddy streets. It was about midnight. Some one began to sing one of the inevitable marching songs. The officer turned round: “Whistle, but don’t sing. People asleep.” They began to whistle “Where are the lads of the village to-night?” Winterbourne found himself crossing the Thames and looked once more at the familiar townscape. He noticed that the street-lamps had been dimmed further since he had left London, and that the once brilliantly-lighted capital now lay cowering in darkness. The dome of St. Paul’s was just faintly visible to an eye which knew exactly where to look for it. The man next to Winterbourne was a Worcestershire ploughman who had never been to London and was most anxious to see St. Paul’s. Winterbourne tried hard to show him where it was, but failed. The ploughman never did see St. Paul’s—he was killed two months later. Curious to march through this unfamiliar London—everything the same, but everything so different. The dimmed street lights, the carefully blinded windows, the rather neglected streets, the comparative absence of traffic, the air of being closed down indefinitely, all gave him an uneasy feeling. It was as if a doom hung over the great city, as if it had passed its meridian of power and splendour, and was sinking back, back into the darkened past, back into the clay hills and marshes on which it stands. That New Zealander sketching the ruins from a broken pile of London Bridge seemed several centuries nearer. _“Where are the lads of the village to-night? Where are the lads we knew? In Piccadilly or Leicester Square? No, not there! No, not there! They’re taking a trip on the Continong....”_ The foolish words ran in Winterbourne’s brain as the men whistled the tune with exasperating pertinacity. It was curious to be so near to Fanny and Elizabeth. He wondered vaguely what they were doing. _“No, not there! No, not there!”_ He had sent Elizabeth a telegram from a station on the way up, but probably it had not reached her.