The chauffeur had turned the car and put out the lamps. The war material was stored in a big locker under the back seat, and consisted of a couple of cans of petrol, half a sack of shavings, and a bundle of tow. The chauffeur passed them out to Kentucky, who had taken off his heavy coat and thrown it into the car. “Now then, all ready, comrades?” “Joan knows the way!” Eve’s mute acceptance of the adventure was not destined to survive the night-march through the fir woods. She was walking beside Joan Gaunt, who led the attacking party, Lizzie Straker shadowing Lawrence Kentucky, Jones, the chauffeur, carrying the petrol cans and bringing up the rear. The grey sandy track wound like a ribbon among the black boles of the firs, whose branches kept up a sibilant whispering as the night wind played through them. It struck Eve that they were going in the wrong direction. “We are walking away from Fernhill!” Joan Gaunt snapped a retort out of the darkness. “We are not going to Fernhill.” Eve was puzzled. She might have asked in the words of unregenerate man, “Then where the devil are you going?” In another moment she had guessed at their objective, remembering Canterton’s cottage that stood white and new and empty, under the black benisons of the tall firs. Her cottage! She thought of it instantly as something personal and precious, something that was symbolical, something that these _pétroleuses_ should never harm. “What are you going to burn this time?” “A new house that belongs to the Cantertons of Fernhill.” Eve’s sense of humour was able to snatch one instant’s laughter from the unexpectedness of the adventure. What interplay life offered. What a jest circumstances were working off on her. She was being challenged to declare herself, subjected to a Solomon’s judgment, posed by being asked to destroy something that had been created for the real woman in herself. She was conscious of a tense feeling at the heart, and a quickening of her breathing. The physical part of her was to be embroiled. She heard Lizzie Straker giggling noiselessly, and the sound angered her, touched some red spot in her brain. She felt her muscles quivering. “Would it be the cottage?” Her doubts were soon set at rest, for Joan Gaunt turned aside along a broad path that led through a dense plantation. It was thick midnight here, but as the trees thinned Eve saw a whiteness shining through—the white walls of Canterton’s cottage. For the moment her brain felt fogged. She was trembling on the edge of action, yet still held back and waited. The whole party hesitated on the edge of the wood, the women and Lawrence Kentucky speaking in whispers. “Seems all right!” “Silent as the proverbial tomb!” “I’ll go round and reconnoitre.” He stole off with jerky, striding vehemence, pushed through a young thuja hedge, and disappeared behind the house. In two minutes he was back again, spitting with satisfaction.