while we were driving down
Maybury Hill ceased as abruptly as it began, leaving the evening very
peaceful and still. We got to Leatherhead without misadventure about
nine o'clock, and the horse had an hour's rest while I took supper
with my cousins and commended my wife to their care.

My wife was curiously silent throughout the drive, and seemed
oppressed with forebodings of evil. I talked to her reassuringly,
pointing out that the Martians were tied to the Pit by sheer
heaviness, and at the utmost could but crawl a little out of it; but
she answered only in monosyllables. Had it not been for my promise to
the innkeeper, she would, I think, have urged me to stay in
Leatherhead that night. Would that I had! Her face, I remember, was
very white as we parted.

For my own part, I had been feverishly excited all day. Something
very like the war fever that occasionally runs through a civilised
community had got into my blood, and in my heart I was not so very
sorry that I had to return to Maybury that night. I was even afraid
that that last fusillade I had heard might mean the extermination of
our invaders from Mars. I can best express my state of mind by saying
that I wanted to be in at the death.

It was nearly eleven when I started to return. The night was
unexpectedly dark; to me, walking out of the lighted passage of my
cousins' house, it seemed indeed black, and it was as hot and close as
the day. Overhead the clouds were driving fast, albeit not a breath
stirred the shrubs about us. My cousins' man lit both lamps. Happily,
I knew the road intimately. My wife stood in the light of the
doorway, and watched me until I jumped up into the dog cart. Then
abruptly she turned and went in, leaving my cousins side by side
wishing me good hap.

I was a little depressed at first with the contagion of my wife's
fears, but very soon my thoughts reverted to the Martians. At that
time I was absolutely in the dark as to the course of the evening's
fighting. I did not know even the circumstances that had precipitated
the conflict. As I came through Ockham (for that was the way I
returned, and not through Send and Old Woking) I saw along the western
horizon a blood-red glow, which as I drew nearer, crept slowly up the
sky. The driving clouds of the gathering thunderstorm mingled there
with masses of black and red smoke.

Ripley Street was deserted, and except for a lighted window or so
the village showed not a s