This advance occupied a day, and when a halt was made for the night the enemy's front extended from Walton to Thames Ditton, thence across Kingston Common and Malden to Mitcham. Bivouacing, they faced the British second line of defence, and waited for the morrow to commence their onslaught. In London the alarming news of the enemy's success caused a panic such as had never before been experienced in the metropolis. During the long anxious weeks that the enemy had been held within bounds by our Volunteers, London had never fully realised what bombardment would mean. While the French were beyond the Surrey Hills, Londoners felt secure; and the intelligence received of the enemy's utter rout at Newcastle, Manchester, Edinburgh, and Glasgow added considerably to this sense of security. London, alas! was starving. Business was suspended; trains no longer left the termini; omnibuses, trams, and cabs had ceased running, the horses having been pressed into military service, and those which had not had been killed and eaten. The outlook everywhere, even during those blazing sunny days and clear moonlit nights, was cheerless and dispiriting. The bright sun seemed strangely incongruous with the black war-clouds that overhung the gigantic city, with its helpless, starving, breathless millions. In the sun-baked, dusty streets the roar of traffic no longer sounded, but up and down the principal thoroughfares of the City and the West End the people prowled, lean and hungry--emaciated victims of this awful struggle between nations--seeking vainly for food to satisfy the terrible pangs consuming them. The hollow cheek, the thin, sharp nose, the dark-ringed glassy eye of one and all, told too plainly of the widespread suffering, and little surprise was felt at the great mortality in every quarter. In Kensington and Belgravia the distress was quite as keen as in Whitechapel and Hackney, and both rich and poor mingled in the gloomy, dismal streets, wandering aimlessly over the great Modern Babylon, which the enemy were now plotting to destroy. The horrors of those intensely anxious days of terror were unspeakable. The whole machinery of life in the Great City had been disorganised, and now London lay like an octopus, with her long arms extended in every direction, north and south of the Thames, inert, helpless, trembling. Over the gigantic Capital of the World hung the dark Shadow of Death. By day and by night its ghastly presence could be felt; its hideous realities crushed the heart from those who would face the situation with smiling countenance. London's wealth availed her not in this critical hour. Grim, spectral, unseen, the Destroying Angel held the sword over her, ready to strike! CHAPTER XXXIV. LOOTING IN THE SUBURBS.