“If they’ll get drunk quietly, it will be the best thing in the world for everybody. . . . D’you smell burning?” I sniffed; but my duller senses told me nothing till I saw a distant orange glow fainter than the reflection of a winter sunset. “They’ve started a fire. I can’t see where.” “Is it making any difference to the fog?” “No, but I believe the fog’s lifting. I can see . . . oh, ten yards. Come out of the way: I think the police are going to charge again.” Though I dragged at his arm, O’Rane stayed motionless. “If the fog’s lifting . . .,” he murmured slowly. Then, for the second time that evening, he gripped my hand. “We must go while the going’s good. The stable-door. And afterwards by Smith Square and Great College Street.” I found myself suddenly alone. The fog was certainly lifting, for I could see the concerted rush of the police, though I was not in time to get out of their way. It was a truncheon, I think, and not a stray stone that brought me down. I remember excruciating pain at the side of my head; I remember my knees giving slowly beneath me; and then, for a time, I remember nothing more. 6 When I came to, the fire was invisible; but the battle was still raging. My glasses were gone; my head ached savagely; and an ungentle foot had trodden my left hand to a bleeding pulp. I felt overpoweringly sick; and I wanted to crawl away from all this din till I had recovered my nerve. I did not know why I was there at all. Then I remembered O’Rane and the stable-door. During the war, I was told by many of my friends that, in the first moments after being slightly wounded, they became wholly demoralized: they might have been facing intensive fire for several hours on end without undue discomfort, but, when once they had been hit, they dodged and cowered their way back to the clearing-station as though the heavens were raining shrapnel upon them. My own demoralization, as I slunk away and made for the stable-door by the other side of the house, was more complete than I care to remember: I ducked, I sidestepped, I ran, I hid, everywhere pursued by the reek and roar of struggling humanity, convinced against all reason that I alone was visible in the darkness and that every missile was deliberately aimed at me. The stable-door was locked; I could see no one near it; and I sank to the ground till I should faint again or be trampled to death. There was some challenge, some pass-word for me to remember; but, when I heard a whistle, I forgot my orders and called out: “Here I am! All clear.” There was a precautionary pause before the door was opened. Then O’Rane pushed a small, muffled figure towards me and stepped into the road with a second figure, slightly larger and equally muffled, in his arms. “Shut the door quietly and follow me,” he whispered. “It locks itself.” “Where’s Sonia?,” I asked. “I must go back for her. She’s rather rattled.”