He learned they were the wife and the younger sister of a surgeon
living at Stanmore, who had come in the small hours from a dangerous
case at Pinner, and heard at some railway station on his way of the
Martian advance. He had hurried home, roused the women their servant
had left them two days before packed some provisions, put his revolver
under the seat luckily for my brother and told them to drive on to
Edgware, with the idea of getting a train there. He stopped behind to
tell the neighbours. He would overtake them, he said, at about half
past four in the morning, and now it was nearly nine and they had seen
nothing of him. They could not stop in Edgware because of the growing
traffic through the place, and so they had come into this side lane.
That was the story they told my brother in fragments when presently
they stopped again, nearer to New Barnet. He promised to stay with
them, at least until they could determine what to do, or until the
missing man arrived, and professed to be an expert shot with the
revolver a weapon strange to him in order to give them confidence.
They made a sort of encampment by the wayside, and the pony became
happy in the hedge. He told them of his own escape out of London, and
all that he knew of these Martians and their ways. The sun crept higher
in the sky, and after a time their talk died out and gave place to an
uneasy state of anticipation. Several wayfarers came along the lane,
and of these my brother gathered such news as he could. Every broken
answer he had deepened his impression of the great disaster that had
come on humanity, deepened his persuasion of the immediate necessity
for prosecuting this flight. He urged the matter upon them.
We have money, said the slender woman, and hesitated.
Her eyes met my brother s, and her hesitation ended.
So have I, said my brother.
She explained that they had as much as thirty pounds in gold, besides a
five-pound note, and suggested that with that they might get upon a
train at St. Albans or New Barnet. My brother thought that was
hopeless, seeing the fury of the Londoners to crowd upon the trains,
and broached his own idea of striking across Essex towards Harwich and
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