"Save that space," answered Hinkel. "It'll be needed later."
Briefly, a certain pride rose through the darkness of guilt which lay in Arch. These were the old Americans, the same folk who had stood at Concord and gone west into Indian country. They were a survivor type.
But most of their countrymen weren't, he realized sickly. Urban civilization had become too big, too specialized. There were people in the millions who had never pitched a tent, butchered a pig, fixed a machine. What was going to become of them?
Toward evening, he was relieved and slogged home, too numb with cold and weariness to think much. He gulped down the dinner his wife had ready and tumbled into bed.
It seemed as if he had not slept at all when the phone was ringing. He groped toward it, cursing as he tried to unglue his eyes. Culquhoun's voice rattled at him:
"You and Betty come up to the college, Somerset Hall, right away. There's hell to pay."
"How—?"
"Our lookout on the water tower has seen fires starting to the south. Something's approaching, and it doesn't look friendly."
Sleep drained from Arch and he stood in a grayness where Satan jeered at him: "Si monumentum requiris, circumspice!" Slowly, he nodded. "We'll be right along."
The campus was jammed with townspeople. In the vague pre-dawn light, Arch saw them as a moving river of white, frightened faces. Farmer, merchant, laborer, student, teacher, housewife, they had all receded into a muttering anonymity through which he pushed toward the steps of the hall. The irregular militia was forming ranks there, with Culquhoun's shaggy form dominating the scene.