“Has it come?” I asked myself, and laughed at the question. It had been the current one in Petrograd for weeks. Every time the electric light failed, the water was turned off, or some one banged a door or dropped a block of wood, Petrograd jumped automatically to the same conclusion: it has come! I put down the receiver, straightened the papers on my desk, and started for the censor’s office. A new sentry was pacing up and down outside the hotel. On the Morskaya, in the block below, the armored car in the courtyard of the telephone exchange had moved nearer the sidewalk, and was flaunting its guns ominously at the passing throng. I hurried on, bent upon getting my letters ready for the weekly express. Mr. Novometzky, the kindly censor, who softened one’s heart to the whole tribe of blue-pencilers, shook his head despairingly when I entered. “Well, it has come,” he said. “There is trouble again. These are bad times for poor Russia.” I left him, and walked briskly toward the Nevsky on the trail of a possible courier who would carry my mail across the world to San Francisco. At the Moika a crowd had gathered around a big limousine. Three soldiers held a brief parley with the chauffeur, then one of them climbed into the vacant seat beside him. Farther down the street another car was stopped, then another, and another. I dined that night with a French aviator, and afterward we stood in the lobby and watched a Battalion of Death file through the whirling door and encamp on the marble floor. At ten o’clock we wandered into the black streets. The Nevsky was quiet. The Palace square was almost deserted. Along the Neva, at the entrance to each of the bridges, a group of soldiers crowded around a log fire. Here and there in the center of the circle was a small boy, thrilling as small boys do the world over at the lateness of the hour, the bigness of his companions, and the adventure of the moment. A few steps away from each of these groups was a wagon filled with ammunition. Back in the hotel, I met Baron B., whose title, estates, and sympathies were all bound up in the hope of a return of the monarchy. “Well, we have got them on the run this time,” he said. Only a week before I had sat next to him at a dinner where, before my amazed eyes, they toasted the Tsar and sang the old tabooed national anthem. Our host, an Englishman, had introduced the baron as a great officer and an absolutely fearless human being. “He helped to stop the retreat from Tarnopol on the southwestern front after the July offensive,” he said. “You ought to have seen him lining up those deserters before the firing squad. He made quick work of the bloody cowards.” I urged the baron to tell me of his experiences, and shuddered as I listened. He had nothing but contempt for Kerensky, his commander-in-chief, and was eager for his downfall. His only fear was that the Soviet would not take over the government.