with the report of a bursting bomb, and that, on the instant,
turned night into day, and then left the darkness more dark.

Ford gave a cry of delight.

"They're taking flash-light photographs" he cried jubilantly. "Well
done, you Pressmen!" The instinct of the reporter became
compelling. "If they're alive to develop those photographs
to-night," he exclaimed eagerly, "Cuthbert will send them by
special messenger, in time to catch the MAURETANIA and the REPUBLIC
will have them by Sunday. I mayn't be alive to see them," he added
regretfully, "but what a feature for the Sunday supplement!"

As the eyes of the two prisoners became accustomed to the darkness,
they saw that the street was not, as at first they had supposed,
entirely empty. Directly below them in the gutter, where to
approach it was to invite instant death from Prothero's pistol, lay
the dead body of a policeman, and at the nearer end of the street,
not fifty yards from them, were three other prostrate forms. But
these forms were animate, and alive to good purpose. From a
public-house on the corner a row of yellow lamps showed them
clearly. Stretched on pieces of board, and mats commandeered from
hallways and cabs, each of the three men lay at full length,
nursing a rifle. Their belted gray overcoats, flat, visored caps,
and the set of their shoulders marked them for soldiers.

"For the love of Heaven!" exclaimed Ford incredulously, "they've
called out the Guards!"

As unconcernedly as though facing the butts at a rifle-range, the