The threat of danger was arousing in every individual a passionate need for communication, for re-assurance, for the warmth and comfort of the crowd. The herd, about to be attacked, was drawing together. Its out-posts were coming back at the trot, heads high, ears alert, snorting the alarm. Even the rogue and outcast were seeking re-admission and finding it amid acclamation. The main body were packing in a square, heads to the danger, nostrils quivering, antlers ready. An enemy was a-foot just beyond the sky-line. He has not declared himself as yet. But the wind betrayed his presence; and the secret stir of the disturbed and fearful wilderness was evidence enough that the Flesh-eater was abroad. The turf sprang deliciously beneath the Colonel's feet. His youth seemed to have returned to him. He felt curiously braced and high of heart. Once he paused to look about him. Beyond the huge smooth bowl of the links with its neat greens and the little boxes of sand, its pleasant club-house, its evidence of a smooth and leisurely civilisation, Paradise rippled at the touch of a light-foot breeze. The Downs shimmered radiantly, their blemishes hidden in the mists of morning. On his right, beyond the ha-ha, the Duke's Lodge stood back in quiet dignity amid its beeches, typical of the England that was about to fade away like a cinema picture at a touch. A lark sang. The Colonel lifted his face to the speck poised and thrilling in the blue. What a day to go to war on! was his thought. At the deserted club-house he dropped down into Lovers' Lane and climbed up towards Old Town between high flint walls, ivy-covered. As he emerged into Rectory Walk the Archdeacon was coming out of his gate. He was in his glory. His faded eyes glittered like those of an old duellist about to engage, and confident of his victim. "I've been waiting this day for forty-five yeahs," he announced. The Colonel was aware of the legend that in 1870 the Archdeacon, then a lad at Cambridge, had only been restrained from fighting for his hero, the Emperor of the French, by a brutal father. "It certainly looks as if you might get back a bit of your own," he said wearily. The other's dreadful exaltation served only to depress him. "Russia going at em one side and France the other." "And England!" cried the Archdeacon. "You think we shall go in?" To the Colonel's horror, the Archdeacon took him by the arm. "Can you doubt it?" he cried, rolling his eyes to see the impression he was making on the grocer in the door of the little corner-shop. "Are we rotten to the heart?" They were walking down Church Street now, arm-in-arm, in the middle of the road. "The pity of it is," he cried in his staccato voice, "we've no Emperah to lead us to-day. Ah! there was a man!" He made a dramatic halt in mid-street. "_Thank Gahd for Carson--what!_" he whispered. "And Smith," said the Colonel meekly. "Let us give thanks for Smith too--