thence escaping from the country altogether.
Mrs. Elphinstone that was the name of the woman in white would listen
to no reasoning, and kept calling upon George ; but her sister-in-law
was astonishingly quiet and deliberate, and at last agreed to my
brother s suggestion. So, designing to cross the Great North Road, they
went on towards Barnet, my brother leading the pony to save it as much
as possible. As the sun crept up the sky the day became excessively
hot, and under foot a thick, whitish sand grew burning and blinding, so
that they travelled only very slowly. The hedges were grey with dust.
And as they advanced towards Barnet a tumultuous murmuring grew
stronger.
They began to meet more people. For the most part these were staring
before them, murmuring indistinct questions, jaded, haggard, unclean.
One man in evening dress passed them on foot, his eyes on the ground.
They heard his voice, and, looking back at him, saw one hand clutched
in his hair and the other beating invisible things. His paroxysm of
rage over, he went on his way without once looking back.
As my brother s party went on towards the crossroads to the south of
Barnet they saw a woman approaching the road across some fields on
their left, carrying a child and with two other children; and then
passed a man in dirty black, with a thick stick in one hand and a small
portmanteau in the other. Then round the corner of the lane, from
between the villas that guarded it at its confluence with the high
road, came a little cart drawn by a sweating black pony and driven by a
sallow youth in a bowler hat, grey with dust. There were three girls,
East End factory girls, and a couple of little children crowded in the
cart.
This ll tike us rahnd Edgware? asked the driver, wild-eyed,
white-faced; and when my brother told him it would if he turned to the
left, he whipped up at once without the formality of thanks.
My brother noticed a pale grey smoke or haze rising among the houses in
front of them, and veiling the white facade of a terrace beyond the
road that appeared between the backs of the villas. Mrs. Elphinstone
suddenly cried out at a number of tongues of smoky red flame leaping up
above the houses in front of them against the hot, blue sky. The
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