At three o’clock I started for Smolney, a little old revolutionist whom we Americans all called “Daddy R.,” trotting beside me. We walked down the Morskaya toward the telephone exchange. Just opposite we halted. Coming toward us, in regular marching formation, was a company of military cadets, strapping, handsome fellows from the officers’ school. Before they reached the building, the commander halted them. Half of the number walked deliberately past the armored car, turned, and approached from the other side. A volley of rifle fire broke the stillness, and the crowd scurried to the cover of doorways and side streets. A gray-bearded, benevolent-looking _dvornik_ dragged me inside a courtyard, where a dozen other people sought shelter, and clanged the great iron door shut behind us. A beggar, with legs cut off at the knees, hobbled beside me. “_Crack! Crack!_” went the rifles again--then a moment of breathless silence. The _dvornik_ cautiously opened the door a few inches, and I put my head out. The street was deserted. The cadets were crouched in kneeling positions on the sidewalks against the wall, guns pointing at the telephone office. The _dvornik_ pushed the door shut again, and this time he locked it and motioned us to follow. We crossed a courtyard, and turned into a dark, narrow tunnel, through which we picked our way over piles of debris and up and down stone steps till we came into the open a block below. By another route Daddy R. and I made our way back to the Morskaya. I stepped to the middle of the street to see what was happening, but a Russian officer motioned me away. “They will fire again in a minute,” he said. “They are trying to take the telephone exchange from the Bolsheviki.” He had no sooner finished speaking than the front of the building began to belch lead in a shower that sent the cadets hurrying in search of shelter. An armored car hove in sight from the opposite direction, opened fire, and completed the rout of the attacking force. We hurried toward the Nevsky. The bridge across the Moika was bristling with guns. Four armored cars barred the way, and a crowd of soldiers and sailors worked rapidly, throwing up a barricade across the street. One man was stretched flat on the wooden pavement, prepared to fire a machine-gun from the protection of a telegraph-pole. The Red Guards waved the passengers back from the bridge, but the tracks were left open, and the cars went back and forth unhindered. We tried to make our way through the old France Hotel, which wanders all over the block between the Morskaya and the Moika, and out on to the canal by another entrance. Again we were turned back. Another volley of gunshot sent us scurrying to the shelter of a basement shop.