over it all; when I realised that the shadow had been rolled back, and
that men might still live in the streets, and this dear vast dead city
of mine be once more alive and powerful, I felt a wave of emotion that
was near akin to tears.
The torment was over. Even that day the healing would begin. The
survivors of the people scattered over the country leaderless, lawless,
foodless, like sheep without a shepherd the thousands who had fled by
sea, would begin to return; the pulse of life, growing stronger and
stronger, would beat again in the empty streets and pour across the
vacant squares. Whatever destruction was done, the hand of the
destroyer was stayed. All the gaunt wrecks, the blackened skeletons of
houses that stared so dismally at the sunlit grass of the hill, would
presently be echoing with the hammers of the restorers and ringing with
the tapping of their trowels. At the thought I extended my hands
towards the sky and began thanking God. In a year, thought I in a year.
. . .
With overwhelming force came the thought of myself, of my wife, and the
old life of hope and tender helpfulness that had ceased for ever.
IX.
WRECKAGE.
And now comes the strangest thing in my story. Yet, perhaps, it is not
altogether strange. I remember, clearly and coldly and vividly, all
that I did that day until the time that I stood weeping and praising
God upon the summit of Primrose Hill. And then I forget.
Of the next three days I know nothing. I have learned since that, so
far from my being the first discoverer of the Martian overthrow,
several such wanderers as myself had already discovered this on the
previous night. One man the first had gone to St. Martin s-le-Grand,
and, while I sheltered in the cabmen s hut, had contrived to telegraph
to Paris. Thence the joyful news had flashed all over the world; a
thousand cities, chilled by ghastly apprehensions, suddenly flashed
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