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ing; but the sitting-room was empty. He felt as if he were on a desert island, with the last sail disappearing over the dark rim of the world.

After much vain ringing he got into communication with Fortin's house, and heard a confused voice saying that the physician had already left Paris.

"Left—for where? For how long?"

And then the eternal answer: "The doctor is mobilised. It's the war."

Mobilised—already? Within the first twenty-four hours? A man of Fortin's age and authority? Campton was terrified by the uncanny rapidity with which events were moving, he whom haste had always confused and disconcerted, as if there were a secret link between his lameness and the movements of his will. He rang up Dastrey, but no one answered. Evidently his friend was out, and his friend's bonne also. "I suppose she's mobilised: they'll be mobilising the women next."

At last, from sheer over-agitation, his fatigued mind began to move more deliberately: he collected his wits, laboured with his more immediate difficulties, and decided that he would go to Fortin-Lescluze's house, on the chance that the physician had not, after all, really started.

"Ten to one he won't go till to-morrow," Campton reasoned.

The hall of the hotel was emptier than ever, and no