'Cor, look, it's snowing!' exclaimed a boy with his face turned upwards to catch reflected light. Daniel – not wanting to see it, really – raised his eyes slowly, and found the sky filled with some kind of loose chaff, swirling in slow vortices here and there but heading generally downwards. He grabbed a piece of it from the air: it was page 798 of a Bible, all charred round the margins. He reached again and snared a hand-written leaf from a goldsmith's account-book, still glowing at one corner. Then a handbill – a libel attacking Free Coinage. A personal letter from one Lady to another. They accumulated on his shoulders like falling leaves and he stopped reading them after a while.