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cloud drift that streamed across the sky. But about one o'clock there
began a flickering of searchlights athwart that ruddy tumult, a
flickering that continued for the rest of the night. That too might mean
many things? What could it mean? What did it mean? Just this stained
unrestful sky he had and the suggestion of a huge explosion to occupy
his mind. There came no further sounds, no further running, nothing but
a shouting that might have been only the distant efforts of drunken
men...
He did not turn up his lights; he stood at his draughty broken window, a
distressful, slight black outline to the officer who looked ever and
again into the room and exhorted him to rest.
All night Redwood remained at his window peering up at the ambiguous
drift of the sky, and only with the coming of the dawn did he obey his
fatigue and lie down upon the little bed they had prepared for him
between his writing-desk and the sinking fire in the fireplace under the
great hog's skull.
III.
For thirty-six long hours did Redwood remain imprisoned, closed in and
shut off from the great drama of the Two Days, while the little people
in the dawn of greatness fought against the Children of the Food. Then
abruptly the iron curtain rose again, and he found himself near the very
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