“Zeps, Daddy!”

“Yes, my dear.  Where are the maids?”

An Irish voice answered from the hall:  “Here, sir; trustin’ in God; but ’tis better on the ground floor.”

He saw a huddle of three figures, queerly costumed, against the stairs.

“Yes, Yes, Bridgie; you’re safe down here.”  Then he noticed that Noel was gone.  He followed her out into the Square, alive with faces faintly luminous in the darkness, and found her against the garden railings.

“You must come back in, Nollie.”

“Oh, no!  Cyril has this every day.”

He stood beside her; not loth, for excitement had begun to stir his blood.  They stayed there for some minutes, straining their eyes for sight of anything save the little zagged splashes of bursting shrapnel, while voices buzzed, and muttered:  “Look!  There!  There!  There it is!”

But the seers had eyes of greater faith than Pierson’s, for he saw nothing:  He took her arm at last, and led her in.  In the hall she broke from him.

“Let’s go up on the roof, Daddy!” and ran upstairs.

Again he followed, mounting by a ladder, through a trapdoor on to the roof.

“It’s splendid up here!” she cried.

He could see her eyes blazing, and thought:  ’How my child does love excitement—­it’s almost terrible!’

Over the wide, dark, star-strewn sky travelling searchlights, were lighting up the few little clouds; the domes and spires rose from among the spread-out roofs, all fine and ghostly.  The guns had ceased firing, as though puzzled.  One distant bang rumbled out.

“A bomb!  Oh!  If we could only get one of the Zeps!”

A furious outburst of firing followed, lasting perhaps a minute, then ceased as if by magic.  They saw two searchlights converge and meet right overhead.

“It’s above us!” murmured Noel.

Pierson put his arm round her waist.  ‘She feels no fear!’ he thought.  The search-lights switched apart; and suddenly, from far away, came a confusion of weird sounds.

“What is it?  They’re cheering.  Oh!  Daddy, look!” There in the heavens, towards the east, hung a dull red thing, lengthening as they gazed.

“They’ve got it.  It’s on fire!  Hurrah!”

Through the dark firmament that fiery orange shape began canting downward; and the cheering swelled in a savage frenzy of sound.  And Pierson’s arm tightened on her waist.

“Thank God!” he muttered.

The bright oblong seemed to break and spread, tilted down below the level of the roofs; and suddenly the heavens flared, as if some huge jug of crimson light had been flung out on them.  Something turned over in Pierson’s heart; he flung up his hand to his eyes.

“The poor men in it!” he said.  “How terrible!”

Noel’s voice answered, hard and pitiless: 

“They needn’t have come.  They’re murderers!”