the direction from which he had come.

Partly stunned, he found himself facing the man who had held the
horse's head, and became aware of the chaise receding from him down
the lane, swaying from side to side, and with the women in it looking
back. The man before him, a burly rough, tried to close, and he
stopped him with a blow in the face. Then, realising that he was
deserted, he dodged round and made off down the lane after the chaise,
with the sturdy man close behind him, and the fugitive, who had turned
now, following remotely.

Suddenly he stumbled and fell; his immediate pursuer went headlong,
and he rose to his feet to find himself with a couple of antagonists
again. He would have had little chance against them had not the
slender lady very pluckily pulled up and returned to his help. It
seems she had had a revolver all this time, but it had been under the
seat when she and her companion were attacked. She fired at six
yards' distance, narrowly missing my brother. The less courageous of
the robbers made off, and his companion followed him, cursing his
cowardice. They both stopped in sight down the lane, where the third
man lay insensible.

"Take this!" said the slender lady, and she gave my brother her
revolver.

"Go back to the chaise," said my brother, wiping the blood from his
split lip.

She turned without a word--they were both panting--and they went
back to where the lady in white struggled to hold back the frightened
pony.

The robbers had evidently had enough of it. When my brother looked
again they were retreating.

"I'll sit here," said my brother, "if I may"; and he got upon the
empty front seat. The lady looked over her shoulder.

"Give me the reins," she said, and laid the whip along the pony's
side. In another moment a bend in the road hid the three men from my
brother's eyes.

So, quite unexpectedly, my brother found himself, panting, with a
cut mouth, a bruised jaw, and bloodstained knuckles, driving along an
unknown lane with these two women.

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
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


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