hedges and ditches hissed and squealed in the darkness and pursued and
fled, and devoured or were slain.

And one night in April he was perplexed by a commotion among the
pheasants and a barking of distant dogs, and then to his great
astonishment he heard noises like a distant firework display and saw
something like a phantom yellowish fountain-pen in the sky far away to
the east lit intermittently by a quivering search-light and going very
swiftly. And after he had rubbed his eyes and looked again, he realised
that he was looking at a Zeppelin--a Zeppelin flying Londonward over
Essex.

And all that night was wonder....

Section 8

While Mr. Britling was trying to find his duty in the routine of a
special constable, Mrs. Britling set to work with great energy to attend
various classes and qualify herself for Red Cross work. And early in
October came the great drive of the Germans towards Antwerp and the sea,
the great drive that was apparently designed to reach Calais, and which
swept before it multitudes of Flemish refugees. There was an exodus of
all classes from Antwerp into Holland and England, and then a huge
process of depopulation in Flanders and the Pas de Calais. This flood
came to the eastern and southern parts of England and particularly to
London, and there hastily improvised organisations distributed it to a
number of local committees, each of which took a share of the refugees,
hired and furnished unoccupied houses for the use of the penniless, and
assisted those who had means into comfortable quarters. The Matching's
Easy committee found itself with accommodation for sixty people, and
with a miscellaneous bag of thirty individuals entrusted to its care,
who had been part of the load of a little pirate steam-boat from Ostend.
There were two Flemish peasant families, and the rest were more or less
middle-class refugees from Antwerp. They were brought from the station
to the Tithe barn at Claverings, and there distributed, under the
personal supervision of Lady Homartyn and her agent, among those who
were prepared for their entertainment. There was something like
competition among the would-be hosts; everybody was glad of the chance
of "doing something," and anxious to show these Belgians what England
thought of their plucky little country. Mr. Britling was proud to lead
off a Mr. Van der Pant, a neat little bearded man in a black tail-coat,
a black bowler hat, and a knitted muffler, with a large ruc