Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 5.pdf/81

 The brickmaker would not let him in until he had got a light.

There are those who have blamed the man for that, but until I know my own courage better, I hesitate to join their number.

The doctor yelled and hammered

The brickmaker says he was weeping with terror when at last the door was opened.

"Bolt," gasped the doctor, "bolt," and could say no more. He tried to move to the door to help, and sank down on the chair beside the clock while the brickmaker shot the bolts.

"I don't know what they are!" he repeated several times. "I don't know what they are"—with a high note on the "are."

The brickmaker would have got him whisky, but the doctor would not be left alone with nothing but a flickering light just then.

It was long before the brickmaker could get him to go upstairs

And when the fire was out the giant rats came back, took the dead horse, dragged it across the churchyard into the brickfield and ate at it until it was dawn, none even then daring to disturb them

II

Redwood went round to Bensington about eleven the next morning with the "second edition" of three evening papers in his hand.

Bensington looked up from a despondent meditation over the forgotten pages of the most distracting