The sobs stopped as suddenly as they had begun, but the brain-pressure had been relieved, and he could now think a little. He saw, as from a great way off, himself before the telegram came—he saw that as he planned that memorial service, prepared that elegiac sermon, there had run in his veins a fiery, subtle pride that he, at least, was father of a living man. He had not seen it at the time, but he saw it now—now that his pride had been trampled and he himself was in the same abyss with the souls he was to comfort. He too was father of the dead; Jerry was dead—at last and for ever beyond the reach of his help, his efforts, even his prayers ... the son of the woman from Ihornden. The room was almost in darkness now; fiery lights moved and shifted, and by their glow he read the telegram over again, for at the bottom of his heart was always a sick, insane thought that he must be mistaken, that this blow could not have fallen, that Jerry must still be somewhere alive and up to no good. But the message was there, and now on this third reading, he noticed something peculiar about the phrasing of it—“Private Sumption has died at the front.” Surely this was not the usual form of announcement. He had seen several such messages of woe, and they had read “killed in action” or “died of wounds.” He had never seen one put exactly like this. However, it was not of any real importance. Jerry was dead; that was the only vital, necessary fact. But he would write to Mus’ Archie for particulars.... The lamp was on the table, and he lit it, pushing aside the unused supper-tray and the littered sermon-paper. 5 He wrote on into the night. He found a certain crookedness in his ideas which made him tear up several efforts—he once even found himself writing to Jerry, a proceeding which struck him with peculiar horror. The hours ticked on; the big constellations swung solemnly across the uncurtained window (luckily Policeman was in bed, and did not see the lozenge of gold lamplight that lay in Mrs. Hubble’s backyard). Inside the room the cat prowled to and fro, miaowling to be let out for a scamper on the barn-roofs—at last, he jumped on the table and, upsetting the cocoa, lapped his fill and retired to dignified repose. The mice tapped on the glass front of their cage with little pink hands like anemones.... Mr. Sumption for once did not notice his animals; he sat brooding over the table long after he had finished writing. Then, as the sky was fading into light, and big greyish-white clouds like mushrooms were banking towards the east, he dropped asleep, his head fallen over the back of his chair, with the mouth a little open, his arms hanging at his sides.