cannon of the Life Guards boom. It is the signal. The Zero Hour is at hand. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
A great silence begins.
A hush—a heart throb—a sigh—a suppressed sob; a blurred picture through tears to those whose eyes remained open. Some lips trembled and moved in prayer; the jaws of others were grimly set.
London silent—here was a miracle! Roaring, rumbling, reverberating London—silent. It was awe-inspiring, terrible. This awesome interval held something of the same terrible impotence and experience of the blood-drained world waiting nearly five interminable years for the end. The words of the Psalmist recurred again and again: "Watchman, what of the night?...O Lord, will the night soon pass!" The first minute seemed eternity.
Then just before God seemed about to turn on the world and its blessed din again one of the most dramatic things I can ever know happened. A scream pierced that silence—and our hearts—like a swift, unexpected blade. It was the anguished cry of a woman—a mother. It was like the sudden breaking and tearing of some sturdy heart become parched and dry and tenacious like a drumhead from years of weeping and draining. She could not endure—poor thing!—-
