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were still burning, and pointed out a haze of smoke to me. “They will be hot under foot for days, on account of the thick soil of pine needles and turf,” he said, and then grew serious over “poor Ogilvy.”
    After breakfast, instead of working, I decided to walk down towards the common. Under the railway bridge I found a group of soldiers—sappers, I think, men in small round caps, dirty red jackets unbuttoned, and showing their blue shirts, dark trousers, and boots coming to the calf. They told me no one was allowed over the canal, and, looking along the road towards the bridge, I saw one of the Cardigan men standing sentinel there. I talked with these soldiers for a time; I told them of my sight of the Martians on the previous evening. None of them had seen the Martians, and they had but the vaguest ideas of them, so that they plied me with questions. They said that they did not know who had authorised the movements of the troops; their idea was that a dispute hadarisen at the Horse Guards. The ordinary sapper is a great deal better educated than the common soldier, and they discussed the peculiar conditions of the possible fight with some acuteness. I described the Heat-Ray to them, and they began to argue among themselves.
    “Crawl up under cover and rush ’em, say I,” said one.
    “Get aht!” said another. “What’s cover against this ’ere ’eat? Sticks to cook yer! What we got to do is to go as near as the ground’ll let us, and then drive a trench.”
    “Blow yer trenches! You always want trenches; you ought to ha’ been born a rabbit, Snippy.”
    “ ’Ain’t they got any necks, then?” said a third, abruptly—a little, contemplative, dark man, smoking a pipe.
    I repeated my description.
    “Octopuses,” said he, “that’s what I calls ’em. Talk about fishers of men—fighters of fish 1 it is this time!”
    “It ain’t no murder killing beasts like that,” said the first speaker.
    “Why not shell the darned things strite off and finish ’em?” said the little dark man. “You carn tell what they might do.”
    “Where’s your shells?” said the first speaker. “There ain’t no time. Do it in a rush, that’s my tip, and do it at once.”
    So they discussed it. After a while I left them, and went on to the railway station to get as many morning papers as I could.
    But I will not weary the reader with a description of that long morning and of the longer afternoon. I did not succeed in getting a glimpse of the common, for even Horsell and Chobham church towers were in the handsof the military authorities. The soldiers I addressed didn’t know anything; the officers were mysterious as well as busy. I found people in the town quite secure again in the presence of the military, and I heard for the first time from Marshall, the tobacconist, that his son was among the dead on the common. The soldiers had made the people on the outskirts of Horsell lock up and leave their houses.
    I got back to lunch about two, very tired, for, as I have said, the day was extremely hot and dull; and in order to refresh myself I took a cold bath in the afternoon. About half past four I went up to the railway station to get an evening paper, for the morning papers had contained only a very inaccurate description of the killing of Stent, Henderson, Ogilvy, and the others. But there was little I didn’t know. The Martians did not show an inch of themselves. They seemed busy in their pit, and there was a sound of hammering and an almost continuous streamer of smoke. Apparently they were busy getting ready for a struggle. “Fresh attempts have been made to signal, but without success,” was the stereotyped formula of the papers. A sapper told me it was done by a man in a ditch with a flag on a long pole. The Martians took as much notice of such advances as we should of the lowing of a cow.
    I must confess the sight of all this armament, all this preparation, greatly excited me. My imagination became