Of course all the students in the crammer's biology class, to which
my brother went that day, were intensely interested, but there were no
signs of any unusual excitement in the streets.  The afternoon papers
puffed scraps of news under big headlines.  They had nothing to tell
beyond the movements of troops about the common, and the burning of
the pine woods between Woking and Weybridge, until eight.  Then the
_St. James's Gazette_, in an extra-special edition, announced the bare
fact of the interruption of telegraphic communication.  This was
thought to be due to the falling of burning pine trees across the
line.  Nothing more of the fighting was known that night, the night of
my drive to Leatherhead and back.