Back in town excited throngs were moving in tides up and down the Nevsky. Something was in the air. From the Warsaw Railway station could be heard far-off cannonade. In the _yunker_ schools there was feverish activity. Duma members went from barracks to barracks, arguing and pleading, narrating fearful stories of Bolshevik violence—massacre of the _yunkers_ in the Winter Palace, rape of the women soldiers, the shooting of the girl before the Duma, the murder of Prince Tumanov…. In the Alexander Hall of the Duma building the Committee for Salvation was in special session; Commissars came and went, running…. All the journalists expelled from Smolny were there, in high spirits. They did not believe our report of conditions in Tsarskoye. Why, everybody knew that Tsarskoye was in Kerensky’s hands, and that the Cossacks were now at Pulkovo. A committee was being elected to meet Kerensky at the railway station in the morning…. One confided to me, in strictest secrecy, that the counter-revolution would begin at midnight. He showed me two proclamations, one signed by Gotz and Polkovnikov, ordering the _yunker_ schools, soldier convalescents in the hospitals, and the Knights of St. George to mobilise on a war footing and wait for orders from the Committee for Salvation; the other from the Committee for Salvation itself, which read as follows: To the Population of Petrograd! Comrades, workers, soldiers and citizens of revolutionary Petrograd! The Bolsheviki, while appealing for peace at the front, are inciting to civil war in the rear. Do not dig their provocatory appeals! Do not dig trenches! Down with the traitorous barricades! Lay down your arms! Soldiers, return to your barracks! The war begun in Petrograd—is the death of the Revolution! In the name of liberty, land, and peace, unite around the Committee for Salvation of Country and Revolution! As we left the Duma a company of Red Guards, stern-faced and desperate, came marching down the dark, deserted street with a dozen prisoners—members of the local branch of the Council of Cossacks, caught red-handed plotting counter-revolution in their headquarters…. A soldier, accompanied by a small boy with a pail of paste, was sticking up great flaring notices: By virtue of the present, the city of Petrograd and its suburbs are declared in a state of siege. All assemblies or meetings in the streets, and generally in the open air, are forbidden until further orders. N. PODVOISKY, President of the Military Revolutionary Committee. As we went home the air was full of confused sound—automobile horns, shouts, distant shots. The city stirred uneasily, wakeful.