of bursting shells
lighted the fog. By this time the train was moving swiftly; the car
windows shook with the thunder from the ramparts under which we were
passing; then came inky darkness--a tunnel--then a rush of mist and
wind from the open door as we swept out into the country.

Passengers clinging to the platforms now made their way into the
compartment where I lay almost senseless, and soon the little place
was crowded, and somebody slammed the door.

Then the flying locomotive, far ahead, shrieked, and the train leaped,
rushing forward into the unknown. Blackness, stupefying blackness,
outside; inside, unseen, the huddled passengers, breathing heavily
with sudden stifled sobs, or the choked, indrawn breath of terror; but
not a word, not a quaver of human voices; peril strangled speech as
our black train flew onward through the night.

VIII

A MAN TO LET

The train which bore me out of the arc of the Prussian fire at
Strasbourg passed in between the fortifications of Paris the next
morning about eleven o'clock. Ten minutes later I was in a closed cab
on my way to the headquarters of the Imperial Military Police,
temporarily housed in the Luxembourg Palace.

The day was magnificent; sunshine flooded the boulevards, and a few
chestnut-trees in the squares had already begun to blossom for the
second time in the season; there seemed to be no prophecy of autumn in
sky or sunlight.

The city, as I saw it from the open window of my cab, appeared to be
in a perfectly normal condition. There were, perhaps, a few more
national-guard soldiers on the streets, a few more brightly colored
posters, notices, and placards on the dead walls, but the life of the
city itself had not changed at all; the usual crowds filled the
boulevards, the usual street cries sounded, the same middle-aged
gentlemen sat in front of the cafes reading the same daily papers, the
same waiters served them the same drinks; rows of cabs were drawn up
where cabs are always to be found, and the same policemen dawdled in
gossip with the same flower-girls. I caught the scent of early winter
violets in the fresh Parisian breeze.

Was this the city that Buckhurst looked upon as already doomed?

On the marble bridge gardeners were closing up the morning
flower-market; blue-bloused men with jointed hose sprinkled the
asphalt in front of the Palais de Justice; students strolled under the
trees from the School of Medicine to the Sorbonne; the Luxe