there; he could do nothing except sit up trembling in a vain effort to
orientate himself. Had the room really turned upside down? On an impulse
of terror he jumped back from the engorging night and bumped his
forehead on one of the brass knobs of the bedstead. With horror he
apprehended that what he had so often feared had finally come to pass.
An earthquake had swallowed up London in spite of everybody's assurance
that London could not be swallowed up by earthquakes. He was going down
down to smoke and fire . . . or was it the end of the world? The quick
and the dead . . . skeletons . . . thousands and thousands of skeletons.
. . .

"Guardian Angel!" he shrieked.

Now surely that Guardian Angel so often conjured must appear. A shaft of
golden candlelight flickered through the half open door. The little boy
prepared an attitude to greet his Angel that was a compound of the
suspicion and courtesy with which he would have welcomed a new governess
and the admiring fellowship with which he would have thrown a piece of
bread to a swan.

"Are you awake, Mark?" he heard his mother whisper outside.

He answered with a cry of exultation and relief.

"Oh, Mother," he sighed, clinging to the soft sleeves of her
dressing-gown. "I thought it was being the end of the world."

"What made you think that, my precious?"

"I don't know. I just woke up, and the room was upside down. And first I