"Oh, my dear Brun, you've got an absurdly exaggerated view about everything. You'd twist the Beaminsters into anything to make them fit your theory." "Oh, they'll fit it right enough. But I must be in at the death. We'll meet there together, Christopher. Things will occur before we're much older, my sentimentalist." Christopher shook his head. "There's something sinister about your appearances in the City, Brun. 'Where the carcases are, there will....'" Brun nodded. "It's true enough this time," he said. CHAPTER IX THE DARKEST HOUR "So God help us! and God knows what disorders we may fall into.... Home and to bed with a heavy heart." _Diary of Samuel Pepys._ I During that terrible December week in 1899, England suffered more defeats to her arms than during any other week of the century. Magersfontein, Stormberg, Colenso, their names leapt one after another on to the screen. London was dismayed; London was impatient. Easy enough to declare that the most criminal blunders had been perpetrated, easy enough to explain how one would oneself have conducted this or that, manoeuvred hither or thither some pawn in the game. Dismay remained--a wide active alarm at the things that Life, so suddenly real and dominating and destructive, might in the future be preparing. To Lord John this terrible week was simply the climax to a succession of disturbing revelations of reality. All his days had he been denying Life, wrapping it up in one covering after another, calling it finally a box of chocolates or a racing card, a good cigar or a pretty woman, knowing, at his heart, that somewhere in the dark forest the wild beast was waiting for him, hoping that he might survive to the end without facing it. Now it was before him and its glittering eyes were upon him. He had gone on the Friday of this week, to pay a week-end visit at a country house near Newmarket. Many jolly, happy week-ends he had spent at this same house on other occasions, now, from first to last, it was nightmare.