THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
now interrupted. The porters told him that several remarkable telegrams had been received in the morning from Byfleet and Chertsey stations, but that these had abruptly ceased. My brother could get very little precise detail out of them. "There's fighting going on about Weybridge" was the extent of their information.
The train service was now very much disorganized. Quite a number of people who had been expecting friends from places on the South-Western network were standing about the station. One gray-headed old gentleman came and abused the South-Western Company bitterly to my brother. "It wants showing up," he said.
One or two trains came in from Richmond, Putney, and Kingston, containing people who had gone out for a day's boating, and found the locks closed and a feeling of panic in the air. A man in a blue-and-white blazer addressed my brother, full of strange tidings.
"There's hosts of people driving into Kingston in traps and carts and things, with boxes of valuables and all that," he said. "They come from Molesey and Weybridge and Walton, and they say there's been guns heard at Chertsey, heavy firing, and that mounted soldiers have told them to get off at once because
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