become a volunteer when one ought to be just modestly doing nothing at
all, was in some obscure way a form of disloyalty....

So Mr. Britling was out of conceit with volunteering, and instead he
went and was duly sworn and entrusted with the badge of a special
constable. The duties of a special constable were chiefly not to
understand what was going on in the military sphere, and to do what he
was told in the way of watching and warding conceivably vulnerable
points. He had also to be available in the event of civil disorder. Mr.
Britling was provided with a truncheon and sent out to guard various
culverts, bridges, and fords in the hilly country to the north-westward
of Matching's Easy. It was never very clear to him what he would do if
he found a motor-car full of armed enemies engaged in undermining a
culvert, or treacherously deepening some strategic ford. He supposed he
would either engage them in conversation, or hit them with his
truncheon, or perhaps do both things simultaneously. But as he really
did not believe for a moment that any human being was likely to tamper
with the telegraphs, telephones, ways and appliances committed to his
care, his uncertainty did not trouble him very much. He prowled the
lonely lanes and paths in the darkness, and became better acquainted
with a multitude of intriguing little cries and noises that came from
the hedges and coverts at night. One night he rescued a young leveret
from a stoat, who seemed more than half inclined to give him battle for
its prey until he cowed and defeated it with the glare of his electric
torch....

As he prowled the countryside under the great hemisphere of Essex sky,
or leant against fences or sat drowsily upon gates or sheltered from
wind and rain under ricks or sheds, he had much time for meditation, and
his thoughts went down and down below his first surface impressions of