“Well, if he turns up,” I said to the inspector, “will you tell him that all’s well and that his family has gone to Mr. Oakleigh’s house?” Then, handing him a card, I bent my steps in the direction of the Church House. The fog had lifted; and only a faint haze remained. For the first time in many hours I looked at my watch to explain what seemed to be stars. It was nine o’clock; and I became suddenly conscious of great hunger, great fatigue and almost unbearable pain in my head and hand. At the same moment I began to see the events of the afternoon in their perspective. Nothing quite of this kind had happened for a hundred years. Barbara had confirmed what the policeman told me: this outbreak was isolated and unique. Within the next day or two I was to meet men who had driven unsuspectingly across the battlefield from luncheon-parties an hour before the battle; I was to meet others who drove across the same ground an hour after the surrender and only imagined that the road was under repair. It was local, it was brief; but it was new. Had I seen the beginning or the end? Sardou, I remember, makes one of his characters say: “_An_ émeute _is when the mob is conquered; then they are all_ canaille; _a revolution is when they are victorious; then they are all heroes_.” The _émeute_ of to-day, however, becomes not infrequently the revolution of to-morrow. I felt that, in history, this outbreak might mark a turning-point: it would be the first active step towards a social revolution, or it would be the last demonstration of turbulence before a great and orderly people, with a genius for self-government, adjusted itself slowly, pragmatically and irrationally to the new conditions.