But slumber and sleep though it might there camelater in the summer ominous sounds like the measuredblows of hammers dulled on felt, which, with theirrepeated shocks still further loosened the shawl andcracked the tea-cups. Now and again some glass tin-kled in the cupboard as if a giant voice had shriekedso loud in its agony that tumblers stood inside a cup-board vibrated too. Then again silence fell; and then,night after night, and sometimes in plain mid-daywhen the roses were bright and light turned on thewall its shape clearly there seemed to drop into thissilence this indifference, this integrity, the thud ofsomething falling.

[A shell exploded. Twenty or thirty young men wereblown up in France, among them Andrew Ramsay,whose death, mercifully, was instantaneous.]

At that season those who had gone down to pacethe beach and ask of the sea and sky what messagethey reported or what vision they affirmed had toconsider among the usual tokens of divine bounty â€”the sunset on the sea, the pallor of dawn, the moonrising, fishing-boats against the moon, and childrenpelting each other with handfuls of grass — some-thing out of harmony with this jocundity, this serenity.There was the silent apparition of an ashen-colouredship for instance, come, gone; there was a purplishstain upon the bland surface of the sea as if somethinghad boiled and bled, invisibly, beneath. This intrusioninto a scene calculated to stir the most sublime re-flections and lead to the most comfortable conclusionsstayed their pacing. It was difficult blandly to overlook156