"I am," he answered. "Me and my children." The volley fired on Bachelor's Walk, as it echoed down the long valleys of the world, seemed to serve the purpose of Joshua's trumpet. Thereafter all the walls of civilisation began to crash down one after another with the roar of ruined firmaments. Forty-eight hours later Austria declared war. On Thursday Mr. Asquith, speaking in a crowded and quiet house, proposed the postponement of the Home Rule Bill. Even the hotheads were sober now. Stanley Bessemere discarded his uniform of an Ulster Volunteer in haste, and turned up at the club in chastened mood. He was blatant still, a little furtive, notably less truculent. The martial refrain _Smith and I_ had given place to the dulcet coo _We must all pull together_. "Is he ashamed?" Mrs. Lewknor asked her husband, hushed herself, and perhaps a little guilty. "My dear," the Colonel replied. "Shame is not a word known to your politician. He's thoroughly frightened. All the politicians are. There're bluffing for all they're worth." On the Saturday morning the Colonel went to the club. The junior member for Beachbourne, who was there, and for once uncertain of himself, showed himself childishly anxious to forget and forgive. "Now look here, Colonel!" he said, charming and bright. "If there's an almighty bust-up now, shall you _really_ blame it all on Ulster? Honest Injun!" The Colonel met him with cold flippancy. "Every little helps," he said. "A whisper'll start an avalanche, as any mountaineer could tell you." He took up the _Nation_ of August 1st and began to read the editor's impassioned appeal to the country to stand out. The Colonel read the article twice over. There could be no question of the white-hot sincerity of the writer, and none that he voiced the sentiments of an immense and honest section of the country. He put the paper down and walked home. "If we don't go in," he said calmly to his wife at luncheon, "all I can say is, that I shall turn my back on England for ever and go and hide my head for the rest of my days on the borders of Thibet." In those last days of peace good men and true agonised in their various ways. Few suffered more than the Colonel; none but his wife knew the agony of his doubt. Then Mr. Trupp telephoned to say that Germany had sent an ultimatum to Russia, and that France was mobilising. Mr. Cambon had interviewed the King. The Government was still wavering. The Colonel's course was evident. The little organisation for which he was responsible must express itself, if only in the shrill sharp voice of a mosquito. A meeting of the League must be convened. Tingling with hope, doubt, fear, shame, he set off in the evening to interview Alfred Caspar. Swiftly he crossed the golf-links and turned into Saffrons Croft. There he paused.