There was a vacant seat by the gate, out of the sun and within sound of the gay music. This, after all, was far better than Number Five Love Lane. For a few brief moments "The Merry Widow" (selection) made him feel happier. It would have been nice for Melia--still it couldn't be helped. He ought to have refused the prize--still he had honestly won it. But only an oversight on the part of the blinking Committee had given it him; he could read that in Josiah's ugly mug and in the face of that stuck-up Gerty Preston--so it was one in the eye for them after all! And what price Ma! Her son-in-law broke into a guffaw of melancholy laughter. The old barrel-bodied image got up like one of the Toffs! And yet ... how her hands trembled! ... white gloves on 'em too! ... and that was a queer look she gave him. The old girl, after all, was the best of a rotten bunch. "The Merry Widow" crashed to an abrupt finale, and a light went out suddenly, as it so often did, in the heart of Bill Hollis. Again the stern edge of reality pressed upon him from every side, but almost at once it was swept away by a new excitement. And yet the excitement was not so new as it seemed. All the afternoon it had been present, a chorus, a background, thrilling and momentous, to a series of formal proceedings to which it had nothing in common, to which it did not bear the slightest relation, and yet with a power truly sinister to cast a pall over them. A youth with lungs of brass came through the gate crying the Blackhampton _Evening Star_. Terrible Fighting in Belgium! Awful German Losses! Great Speech by Sir Edward Grey! A sharp thrill ran through the veins of Bill Hollis. It was one more lively variation on a theme that had been kindling his senses at short intervals throughout the afternoon. War, a real big war, was coming, had come. Of course to him personally it wouldn't matter, except that it might make life more interesting. Yes, somehow it was bound to do that. Whether it would make it interesting enough for a man like himself to care to go on living, that was another question. "Here y'are, boy." The boy came across the grass, handed Bill an _Evening Star_ and firmly declined the halfpenny that was offered him. "Penny, sir." A penny for a _Star_ was unheard of. Even the result of the Derby, the result of the match with Yorkshire, the result of the Cup Final itself could not command a penny. Evidently this war, now that it had come at last, was going to be a Record. Yes, a Record. All the same he was not going to pay a penny for it. One halfpenny was the legal price of the Blackhampton _Evening Star_, and he told the boy "that if he had any of his sauce he'd have the police of him." XIII