 CHAPTER VIII OF THE RATE OF DOVER A ROMANCE OF THE RAIN OF WOMAN, A.D. 1940, BY DOUGLAS MORRY FORD. To counteract the dangers arising from the Channel Tunnel, long since an accomplished fact, and to soothe the apprehensions of a large section of the public, new defense works of enormous strength and intricacy had been constructed on the heights of Dover. Always a place of vast importance by reason of its position, the ancient stronghold now had become more notably than ever the key to England. As a watering place it had steadily dwindled in importance. Its neighbor, Folkstone, easily held the palm for all pleasure-seekers, but the commercial development of Dover as a port of call for the great liners had been remarkable, just as its strength for naval purposes had been vastly augmented. The completion of the Admiralty Harbour by the construction of the East Arm and the South Breakwater now afforded a safe haven for the largest warships in the British Navy. Here they might ride at anchor, or safely come and go, always protected by the monster guns which had been mounted in the various forts. A commercial harbour had been provided with a huge marine station, where transatlantic passengers in ever-increasing numbers were enabled to land or embark under shelter, continuing their journey either on land or sea, with a modicum of inconvenience. It was the great aim of competing steam and railway companies to simplify the methods of travel and enable everybody to go everywhere and do everything with the greatest possible amount of comfort. Those who could not trust themselves, invaluable as they were to themselves, amid the chops of the Channel, now might travel by tunnel to and from the Continent, and thus avoid the risks of nausea or the inconsidered assaults of wind or wave. By one means or another, thousands upon thousands of passengers of all nations and tongues streamed through Dover year after year. It was before all things a place of passage. Insofar it was not a place of arms. If one had repeated to most of these globetrotters Gloucester's question of King Lair, dust down old Dover, the answer would probably have been, well, I just caught a glimpse of it. From the Channel, Shakespeare's cliff, to the westward of the Admiralty Pier, certainly was found less impressive than most people had expected. Like English life as a whole, it seemed less spacious than it was considered to be in the days of Good Queen Bess. But then, of course, Shakespeare, with his cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces, was always such a very imaginative dramatist. Still, there was the ancient, though slowly crumbling, cliff remaining in evidence to remind English folks and foreigners of the splendid story of England's past. There, too, on Castle Hill, the ancient Roman pharaohs, adjoining St. Mary's in Castro, reared its ruthless walls towards the clouds. The mariners of England and of Gaul no longer needed the lights of the pharaohs to guide them in the Channel, and, of course, the venerable bells that used to ring for maintenance and even-song, were silent many a year before Admiral Rook removed them to Portsmouth, Parish Church. The Great Castle, close at hand, was visited by very few excursionists. The climb between Castle Hill and the Western Heights was found fatiguing. More Americans than Englishmen appeared to interest themselves in the story of the castle. Its occupation by William of Normandy, after the Battle of Hastings, its association with King John's Craven submission to the Papal Legate, its victorious defense by Herbert de Berg, the French attack fruitless again of 1278, and other incidents of historic interest. The long gun, known as Queen Elizabeth's pocket pistol, still pointed its muzzle seaward, and the inscription in low Dutch, very freely translated, rashly adjured the current generation too, load me well and keep me clean. I'll carry my ball to the calla screen. But inspection of the castle was not encouraged, and tourists of foreign appearance who showed a disposition to take snapshots in the vicinity were promptly checked in their pursuit of the pleasing but too common art of photography. Yet it was certain that, pigeon-hulled in every war-department, of continental and perhaps of certain eastern powers, there were full details, or nearly full, of the elaborate defense works with which Dover was provided. It was known that Castle Hill was honeycombed with subterranean passages and galleries, and that the castle, nowadays a barrack rather than a fortress, was thus connected with the modern forts in its immediate vicinity. Fort Burgoyne, to the north of the castle itself, was until recent times, the strongest link in the chain of defense, its guns being of great caliber, and commanding a vast range over land and sea. But far more powerful, and better equipped with modern armament and military resources, was Fort Warden, such being the name given to the works which had been specially constructed as a safeguard against possible attack by means of the Channel Tunnel. The very hill had been hewn and carved, and molded to meet the needs of such a danger. Commanding the gradual sweep by which the railway descended towards the Tunnel, the great guns of Fort Warden were always trained upon the gaping archway from which the incoming trains were constantly emerging. The highest battery of the fort occupied a dominating position overlooking all the insente fortifications, which were armed with machine guns and small cannon. There was a subterranean passage connecting the fort with the waterworks of a large service reservoir in a hollow of the hill, which had been constructed in modern times to ensure an adequate supply of water for the troops at the Duke of York School. Fort Warden was complete in his self, but linked up with the other fortifications, and formed, as it were, the citadel of a composite fortress where, in the event of attack, the last stand would be made by England's defenders. Round the fort extended a double row of trenches, and within these was a moat. Strong wire entanglements defended the trenches, and the loopholes in the breastworks were protected by three-quarter instill plates, with a cross-shaped opening for the rifles. In addition, strong bomb-proofs were provided for the reserves, with wide bomb-proof passages leading to certain of the other forts. In all directions on the hill were placed howitzers and mortars, most of the battery positions and gun appalments being ingeniously masked and difficult for an advancing enemy to locate. The military scientists who had designed most of the elaborate defenses, and put finishing touches to those of earlier construction, was Major Edgar Wardlaw of the Royal Engineers. His old friend, General Hartwell, held that from the point of view of an invading enemy, this quiet, unassuming officer was the most dangerous man in all the British Army. Major Wardlaw certainly knew better than anyone else of what Dover Castle Hill was capable. The military authorities were very charry of rehearsing as possible performances, because in the vulgar parlance of an earlier period it would give the show away. It was a show that must be closely reserved and kept in dark times of international peace and quietness. Meanwhile, the hillside showed but few signs of life. The winds of heaven blew over it, the rains descended, or the sun shone. Birds hopped about, and people came and went. Often there was hardly a sound to break the silence of the hill. A visitor who had climbed the heights could gaze over the town of Dover, and the hills and valleys behind it, or look right across the channel to the coast of France, quite undisturbed by human voice or sound of busy life. But Major Wardlaw could have told that visitor that on the instant, at a signal, this placid scene could be converted into one of awful violence and furious sound, that in a flash the hill would vomit forth, as if from many avenues of hell, wholesale fiery death and indiscriminate destruction. On every side would rise the roar of monster-ordinates, the ceaseless rattle of machine-guns, the deafening crack of musketry. Woe be tied the foe that dared to rouse the sleeping monster of the hill! Which were Wardlaw's works, as they were called throughout the British army. When the Major retired from active service, he still lingered in the neighborhood of his magnum opus. In a charming bungalow, perched on the hillside of Folkstone Warren, he and Miss Flossie spent unruffled days amid eminently healthy surroundings. The Warren, a bay of much natural beauty, had been rescued from neglect. A station on the line from Folkstone proper to Dover afforded easy access to the bay. Trees had been planted and roads cut in the hillside. Everywhere on summer nights the lights gleamed from villas and bungalows, and down below on the new jetty, and at the masked heads of scores of pleasure-craft. The place suited Major Wardlaw admirably, and even little Miss Wardlaw, who was by the way of being exacting, seemed quite satisfied with her surroundings. Her father kept a small cutter in the bay, and frequently took the young lady for health-giving sales upon the Dancing Sea. Usually their port of call was Dover. The Major was always going to Dover. He couldn't keep away from it. When the cutter was laid up for the winter, he went by train, or sometimes walked across the windswept downs. Dover Towness self had no particular attractions for him. The magnet lay on Castle Hill. In short, Wardlaw could not keep away from Wardlaw's works. Even when he was not visiting the works, he was always thinking about them. When military friends of his came over from Castle or from Shorncliffe, they seemed to talk of nothing else but Fort Warden. All that it was, and all that it would be if the critical hour of conflict or invasion ever came. Flossy Wardlaw disapproved of the whole thing. It annoyed her. This constant absorption, this ever-reoccurring topic of conversation. Personally she refused to discuss the works, and had it been possible would have forbidden all illusion to the Fort when those tiresome friends dropped in and talked shop with her father. Poor Wardlaw, torn with conflicting emotions, knowing that the child was jealous of the works, used to look at her apologetically when one of his cronies started the everlasting topic. But Flossy was not easily to be mollified. With her little nose in the air, she would glance severely, disdainfully, at the author of her being, tossing back that mass of silky, sunny hair from which her pet name was derived. And now the hated subject of the works was more to the fore than ever, for the military movement among the women of England had brought Fort Warden into prominence in the newspapers. The vice-president of the council, in pursuance of her policy, was turning the fort to unseen account. The first Amazons, as they were popularly called, had been enrolled and uniformed, and now the fighting girls, as some people style them, were to have this wonderful fort placed at their disposal for the purpose of training and instruction in the art of war. The idea was very popular among the Amazons. Some two hundred of them were to spend a fort night in the fort, and then give place to another batch, the fort meanwhile being vacated by the artillery men, save only a handful of gunnery instructors and lecturers. So the men marched out of the tortoise-backed works, and the Amazons very smart in their new uniforms, and full of gleeful excitement, briskly and triumphantly marched in. It was a picturesque episode in martial history which afforded excellent scope for lively descriptive reporting. Great numbers of people seemed to be pleasurably interested in the event, just as they used to be in the volunteer military picnics on Easter Monday. There were others, however, who, like General Hartwell, Noisily, and Edgar Wardlaw quietly, condemned the whole thing as monstrous, unseemly in front with danger to the nation. The majority, however, laughed at the minority. What was there to be afraid of? There was not a cloud in the international sky. England's difficulties, they said, now were purely domestic. Greater Britain had been so cut up and divided that we had nothing further to fear. Surely no greedy Jezebel would dream of stirring up a continental Ahab to covet and lay violent hands on the remnant of Naboth's vineyard. END OF CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX OF THE RATE OF DOVER A ROMANCE OF THE RAIN OF WOMEN, AD 1940, by Douglas Morrie Ford. THIS LEAVE REVOCT RECORDING IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. THE LUSINED GRIP BLOODOOD, THE SON OF LUD, founded this bath three hundred years before Christ. It was a far cry from Bloodood to Nicholas Jardine. A goodly span, too. From the time when a great statesman was carried through the streets of Bath, swathed in flannels, his livid face, peering through the windows of the sedan chair, the fierce eyes staring from beneath his powdered wig. One can almost see his ghost in Milsom Street, and hear the whisper spread from group to group. There he goes, the great commissioner, Mr. Pitt. And now through the streets of the same town they wheeled a very different sort of statesman. And yet, perhaps the product, by slow process of inevitable evolution of that very time, when America thrust aside the British scepter, when the ingenious machine of Dr. guillotine removed the heads of King and Queen in France, when Ireland rose in rebellion, when Napoleon grasped at the dominion of the Western world, when Wellington fought the French marshals in Spain, and when, God be thanked, Nelson triumphed at Trafalgar Bay. Just as the inhabitants and visitors of Bath used to take off their hats to William Pitt in his sedan chair, so now the new generation saluted Nicholas Jardine when seated in his Bath chair. He was drawn through the streets to the Baths. For though times were changed, the President in his way was a great personage, such a remarkably successful man. And in all times it has been proved true that nothing succeeds like success. Jardine, when he acknowledged these salutations, showed an awkwardness unknown to those to the manner-born. It disconcerted him to be stared at, especially now that he was ill. He hated traversing the public streets, and often sat with eyes closed until his chair entered the bathing establishment. Once there he became alert and interested, but not in the reminiscence of Georgian functions and the manners and customs of the flops and flirts of that vanished period. What appealed to him, as a trained mechanic, was the heritage of far-remotor days. The brain of the Roman engineer, and the skilled hand of the Roman architect and Mason, had left these signs and wonders for future generations to look upon. The great rectangular bath had only been uncovered about sixty years earlier. The goths and vandals of an earlier period had built over it their trumpery shops and dwelling houses. But the present bath, with its modern additions, actually was built upon the ancient piers. The very pavements, or scullae, that bordered it were those which the Roman bathers had trod. The recesses or exedra corresponded with those at Pompeii, and had been used for hanging the clothes of the Roman bathers or for resting places. The floor of the bath was coated with lead, and in all probability that lead was brought from the Roman mines in the mendip hills. There had been discovered the imperial emblems of Claudius and Vespasian. The president was not without a sense of the beautiful. The scene around him awakened his imagination. He knew that the wooded slopes of the stately hills, the stone hewn from the inexhaustible quarries, and the broad river, formerly spanned by bridges and aqueducts graceful in outline and noble in proportions, each and all had furnished the means which skillful hands had put to glorious uses. Yet all these ingredients of beauty might have remained unused, but for the wonderful thermal waters which here, for untold centuries, had risen ceaselessly from fathomless depths, streaming ever from rocky fissures, filling the pools of natural basins, and still overflowing into the rushing river. But this beneficent spring and these now verdant hills must have had their remote origin in some terrible concussion of natural forces. Mother earth had labored and brought them forth, far back in her prehistoric ages. Subterranean fires, begotten by the portentous union of iron and sulfur, had waited their appointed time. Drop after drop the hidden waters had filtered on inflammable ingredients until the imprisoned air at last exploded, and the earth rending and rocking in appalling convulsions, opened enormous chasms and brought forth amid fire and smoke and vapor, the embryo of all this lovely scene. The city was the offspring of seismic action. The earth had travailed and brought forth these wooded hills. The smiling valley, where now stood the city, was but the crater of an extinct volcano, perpetuated in memory by the steaming waters that still gushed upward from the mystic depths. Below the streets and houses of the modern town were the original baths of the city of Sulkastra, of many acres in extent. Here indeed, in this wonderful of spas, history unfolded itself page by page. The city of Saul in the Grip, successively, of Roman, Saxon, Dain, dynasty succeeding dynasty, sovereign coming after sovereign, statesman after statesman, until now, when the wall-shall mechanic in a bath-chair was all that England had to show by way of substitute for absolute sovereignty and sceptred sway. And with Nicholas Jardine too, the relentless love-time was at work. The sceptre was falling from his grasp. The grass with haireth, the flower fadeeth. Man passes to his long home, and the mourners go about the street. Would it be his turn next? Every day Zenobia seemed to see in her father's face signs of a slowly working change. She witnessed the melancholy spectacle of waning strength, of failing interest in those things that once had absorbed his thoughts and energies. It wrought in her a corresponding change, a protective tenderness which she had never felt before, a deepening sense of the transience and sadness of human pomp and circumstance, a broadened sympathy with all the sons of men. A great silence seemed to have fallen upon the man who in the past had made so many speeches. A brooding wistfulness revealed itself in his expression. There was a haunting look of doubt or question in his eyes. A look as if one who, without compass and without rudder, finds himself drifting on an unknown sea. The land was fading from his sight. The solid earth on which he had walked, self-confident, self-sufficient, no longer gave him foothold. His nervous hands were losing grip on the only life of which he knew anything, the only life in which he had been able to believe. And day by day, and night by night, there came to his mind the memory of his earlier life, of the faith that he had seen shining in the dynies of the woman who had believed while he had disbelieved. Vividly he recalled to mind, albeit with a sense of wonder and irritation, an occasion when he had set beside her in the old cathedral at Litchfield. The sun was setting, and its glory allumed the huge western window. The words of the great man of action, who was also the man of great faith, were being read from the lectern, and at a certain passage his wife had turned and looked at him with sad and supplicating eyes. If in this life we only have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. If in this life only. All other hope he had scorned and rejected. No other hope had seemed needful to his happiness and success. But now? Already this life was dwindling and departing. He felt it. He knew it in his inmost being. As his steps faltered, his hands grew thin and pallid, and his brain, once so busy with a hundred projects and ambitions, now refused to work, or brought him to only recurrent recollections of things which in the prime and strength of his manhood he has scouted and despised. If in this life only. Sometimes a great restlessness possessed him, and Zenobia, in the silent watches of the night, heard him moving heavily and solely about his room. On one of these nights, anxious and alarmed, she hurried in and found him standing at the window in the darkness. The furnished house they occupied was on Bathwick Hill, and the night scene from the windows was one of striking mystery and beauty. The blackness of the valley in which lay the ancient city, and of the towering hills on every side, was studded with myriads of lights, shining like stars in an inverted firmament. Father! She crossed the room and laid her hand upon his arm. But scarcely heating her, the sick man stood still by the window, looking as if fascinated on the magical scene of the night. Zenobia also gazed, and gazed dead fastly, but the impression made upon herself was wholly different. With him it was a sad impression of farewell, but in Zenobia's brain there suddenly sprang up an extraordinary sense of recognition. There was a subtle, haunting familiarity in the scene she looked upon. This valley and these hills, in and about which all that was modern, save the lights, was quite invisible. Thus might the valley of Sucastra have looked under the darkened sky two thousand years ago. Thus might the lamps of Roman villas, temples, baths, and public buildings have twinkled, when a vestial virgin, maintaining souls on dying fires upon the altar, looked down upon the silent city. The puzzled girl caught her breath, half-sign, unable to shake off the belief that at some remote period she had gone through precisely the same experience that was now presented to her. And doubly strange, in connection with the scene, though she could see no reason for it, her thoughts flew instantly to Linton Herrick. She became oppressed, almost suffocated, with a sense of pre-existence, a bewildering sensation, almost a revelation, that seemed to tell of the mystery of the ego, of the indestructibility of human life. It was the last time that Nicholas Jardine looked down upon the old city, by night or by day. The next day he remained in bed, and the day after, and all the days that were left to him. The afternoon sunshine came upon the walls, the shadows followed, night succeeded day. The demarcations of time became blurred. His calendar was growing shorter and shorter. The world mattered less and less to him, who had played a leading part in it, and already he mattered nothing to the world. Death was not close at hand, nevertheless he was dying. For this losing is true dying. This is lordly man's down-lying, this is slow but sure reclining, star by star his world resigning. End of Chapter 9 CHAPTER X OF THE RATE OF DOVER A ROMANCE OF THE RAIN OF WOMEN, A.D. 1940, by Douglas Morrie Ford. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Zenobia's Dream The night which followed her heart-searching experience of feeling on looking down upon the sleeping city of Bath, Zenobia had a dream. It was a vision of extraordinary vividness and strangely circumstantial. Beneath her eyes the golden light of a summer sunset was flooding the temples, the baths, the stately villas of ancient Rome in England, the city of Sucastra. Garbed as a priestess of the temple, she stood upon a plateau, high on the hill of Sol on the east side of the valley. Behind her rose the temple of the goddess, and by her side stood one whom she knew to be the sculptor Lucius Flaccus, son of that centurion who was charged to carry Paul from Admyrtheum to Rome. He had been telling her in graphic phrases of his association with the great apostle, how for the first time he had heard him on Mars Hill at Athens, boldly rebuking the listening and resentful throng, who had erected there an altar to the unknown god. Then with a gesture of repugnance, which horrified the priestess, the narrator, quoting the Christian preacher's words, had turned and pointed towards the temple in which she and other vestals kept ever burning the sacred fire of Sol. For as much then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like silver or gold, graven by art or man's device. Thus far he had spoken when her own voice interrupted passionately. Do not blaspheme the gods. The gods are dead, he answered sternly. Nay, rather, they have never lived. Our Roman gods have eyes that see not, ears that hear not. They are but silver, gold, or stone, the work of hands like these. Thus speaking he held forth his hands, delicate and mobile, in one of which was grasped the chisel of his ancient art. The priestess stood for a moment looking in his eyes, silent, terror-stricken. Yet he went on, bending his gaze upon the city with a sigh. Sulcastra is beautiful. He knew and loved each particular feature of artistic beauty in the city. Its architecture afforded him a delight that never failed. The symbolic work of the chisel was evidenced on every side. The noble columns that supported the terraces, the pavements resembling those of Pompeii, the graceful freezes, and delicate cornices appealed irresistibly to every votary of art. Indeed, the thermae of Sulcastra were held by many of the cultured Romans to be not less splendid than the baths at Scipio, Africanus, or even those built by Rome by Caracalla and Dioclesion. For here, too, the lofty chambers were ornamented with curious mosaics, varied in rich colors, and infinitely delicate in design. And here, also, the medicinal waters were poured into vast reservoirs through wide mouths of precious metal and Egyptian granite, while the green marble of Numidia had been brought from afar to give variety to the native stone from the adjacent quarries. The fame of the wonderful waters went back for eight centuries before the birth of Christ. Here, according to tradition, Vladud, son of Ludd, the British king, father of King Lyr, had found a cure for his foul leprosy. Yonder had stood the first temple of Minerva, dedicated by that same Vladud to the goddess. Had he not sought by magical aid to soar aloft like the eagle, only to fall and be dashed to pieces on Minerva's altar. The sculptor shaded his eyes against the slanting rays of sunlight, and turned his gaze upon the vast stadium in which, at stated intervals, the people of Silcastra witnessed the elaborated games of mighty Rome. Such an occasion recently had occurred, a scene of splendid pageantry and power which invariably moved the spectators to superstitious awe, and often to wild excesses of fanaticism. Young and old had implored the favor of the gods, and pledged themselves to maintain unbroken the religious observances of the Rome and people. In the darkness of night mystic sacrifices had been offered on the banks of the river, and the whole city, as the sculptor and the priestess now looked down upon it, still seemed to be fermenting with the excitement which the great celebration had occasioned. At that very moment an imposing procession was seen to be advancing towards the temple of Minerva. Trumpet note after trumpet note echoed round the hills. Chariots full of garlands and branches of myrtle approached the shrine. A large black bowl was being led to the sacrificial altar, and youths and maidens, chanting a hymn to Minerva, carried in procession costly vases full of wine and milk, to be poured as libations to the goddess, while others bore cruets of wine, oil, and perfumed essences to anoint the pillars of the sacred monuments within the temple. Lucius Flaccus looked down upon the procession with sad and moody eyes. The vestal's eyes were bent no less sadly on the sculptor, as if divining all his thoughts. They sprang, she doubted nod, out of the subject of their conversation, and she turned uneasily towards the pillar altar on which the sculptor's skillful hands had been at work. It stood upon the turf at the entrance to a little grove, which gave access to the gates of the temple of Saul, the temple in which she herself ministered as priestess. A cloth lay over the graceful monument, to the inscription upon which the young Roman had but just now put the final touch. His work upon the monument, screened from view, had long excited the interest and curiosity of the Romans and the slaves who passed that way, but reverence for the goddess and respect for the sculptor himself had served to arrest all questions. The work of art, it was thought, would be unveiled in time, and doubtless it would prove to be another and a worthy tribute to the goddess who presided in a special manner over the fortunes of the city. Lucius Flaccus had studied in a great and noble school. He had gazed long and often on the famous statue of the Olympian Jove, modeled in ivory by the master hand of Phidias. He had marked every curve and feature of the Minerva, standing sixty cubits high, on whose shield the great Athenian sculptor had so marvelously represented the wars of the Amazons. There were those indeed, familiar with the work of the young Roman who foretold for him an imperishable reputation as an exponent of the noble art to which he was devoted. Lucius Flaccus had been welcomed in Solcastra, as one who was likely to add to the beauty of the city and the honor of the special goddess of the citizens. The sculptor's art, like the Ten Commandments, was written on tables of stone. It was for all time, nearly five hundred years had passed since the chisel dropped from the hand of Phidias, but the glory of his work remained. It was indestructible, and also, thought some, might the handy work of Lucius Flaccus be handed down from century to century. The cult of Sol was scarcely distinguishable from that of Vesta. Like Vesta, she was a home goddess, a national deity, whose vestals were solemnly pledged ever to maintain her altar fire, lest its extinction should bring disaster on the people. Sol also was a fire deity. According to the kindred mythology of Scandinavia, the goddess was so beautiful a being that she had been placed in heaven to drive the chariot of the sun, from which she took her name, that glorious sun, the rays of which were now illuminating the city of Solcastra. Sol, in the eyes of the Romans, was more exalted than Soma, daughter of the moon, though in the East Soma was held in the highest reverence as the mother of Buddha. Soma was the sovereign goddess of plants and planets. In the Vedic hymn she was identified with the moon plant which a falcon had brought down from heaven. Its juice was an elixir of life. To drink it conferred immortality on mortals, and even exhilarated the gods themselves. But even greater virtue and miraculous power did the Romans attribute to the waters of Sol, and with better evidence of their potency. For here, in Solcastra, century after century, and ever at the same temperature, the magical, unfathomable well had poured forth its mystic waters for the healing of the people. The temple of Sol, like that of Vesta, was circular, to represent the world, and in the center of the temple stood the altar of the sacred flame, ever burning to symbolize the central fires of Mother Earth, just as the sun was deemed to be the center of the universe. There was nothing strange or unusual in freedom of conversation between the priestess and the sculptor, who, in former years, had added many decorations to the temple. The virgin priestesses were permitted to receive the visits of men by day. By night none but women were suffered to enter their apartments, which adjoined the sacred building in which they ministered. Each priestess was pledged to continents for thirty years. During the first ten they were employed in learning the tenets and rites of their religion. During the next ten they engaged in actual ministrations. In the final ten years they were employed in training the younger Vestals, and after the age of thirty they mined abandoned the functions of the temple and merry. Few exercised that option. Custom, when such an age was reached, had become ingrained, the impulses of youth frozen, and the honor paid to their office became more valued than the prospects of marriage. The reverence shown to them was very great, but also was the punishment that followed a lapse from the letter or the spirit of their duties. The least levity in conduct, the smallest neglect of ministerial duty, was dealt with by the pontifex or the flamens, and visited with great severity. The loss of virginal honor, or the failure to maintain the sacred fire, involved a penalty of inexpressible terror. The condemned priestess, placed in a litter, shut up so closely that her loudest cries were scarcely audible, was carried through the city in the order, and with the adjuncts, or a funeral procession, a journey of death and life, its goal, the niche, or narrow vault in which the living vessel was to be immured. The Sculptor's Story The dreamer knew these things and still dreamed on. It seemed as if her own voice broke the silence. Fane would I know more of this same Paul of whom you speak. Then she paused, but look still questioned him. Presently the young Roman spoke again. My father, the Centurion Julius, was charged to carry him to Rome, and I had planned to bear him company. We took Chipp to sail along the coasts of Asia, touched at Sidon and afterwards at Cyprus, the winds being contrary. Later we tranchipped at Alexandria, and thus reached Crete. The seas grew dangerous and the sailors feared. Scarcely had we sailed when there arose that strong, to punctuous wind they call Ural Clidon. The ship being caught could not bear against the wind, and we let her drive. Then, near the island of Clowda, we were like to be driven on the shore, and faring quick sands we struck sail, and so were driven again. The tempest tossed us, and the ship was lightened. We cast adrift the tackling, but still the tempest held us. Neither sun nor star appeared for many days, and all that time the ship was driven before the storm, until at length the shipmen deemed that we drew near to land. They sounded and found twenty fathoms. Again they sounded and found five fathoms less. Then, fearing we should be upon the rocks, they made all haste to cast four anchors from the stern, and waited for the day. The storm had lasted long? Fourteen days and nights. And there were many in the ship? Two hundred, three score and sixteen souls, and every one was saved. Land lay before us, though we knew it not, but we discovered close at hand a creek. So they took up the anchors, loosened the rudder bands, and hoisted the mainsail to the wind, and made for shore. She ran into a place where two seas met and went aground. The four part held and seemed immovable, but soon the hinder part was broken by the violence of the waves. The soldiers then would have killed all the prisoners, lest they should escape, but my father stayed their hands. Those who could swim sprang first into the sea. Others on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship, made for the land, and I, with all the rest, came safe ashore. The gods be thanked, the gods be thanked for that. The words came fervently from the vestal's lips. He turned on her inside. What, still the gods? She pressed her hands upon her brow. Is there no more to tell? He paused a moment. Already I have told too much, if told in vain. The island we had reached was Melita, and Publius, the chief man of the place, received us courteously. Paul healed his father with a grievous sickness, and many others also ere we departed in a ship of Alexandria. We touched at Syracuse and then at Regium, once we went towards Rome. There many brethren greeted Paul with joy, and there in reverence and sorrow did I part from him. And he, this Paul himself, remains at Rome, having his own hired house, receiving all who come to him, preaching of the heavenly kingdom, teaching with all confidence of the coming of Christ, no man yet forbidding him. Deep silence fell between them, and the only sound came from a droning that in Socostra never ceased by night or day, the voice of the rushing river as a port across the weir. Now they stood erect. Each was tall and nobly framed. Each face had beauty intellectual and physical. Yet in the sculptor's features and his deep-set eyes there was a look that visionaries wear, the stamp of those who nourish great ideals. The gaze of the priestess bent upon him, told a different tale. The dreamer knew this woman loved this man, while he, as yet, had found no passion in his soul for her. She raised her hand in gesture of adieu, and moved with slow steps towards the temple. Then, as if stirred by sudden impulse, she turned to him again. And this Paul, tell me, what teacheth he concerning woman? He teaches that man is the image and the glory of God, and woman the glory of the man. The man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. Neither was man created for the woman, but the woman for the man. He commanded that woman keep silence in the Christian churches, and in all things be subject to their husbands, for the husband is the head of the wife. Then he forbideth not to marry? Is it not, Paul the apostle, of him who blessed the marriage feast of Cana? In whom thou dost believe? In whom I do believe, he answered steadfastly, I tell thee that the banner of the cross shall one day float above the capital of Rome itself. The priestess took two swifter steps towards him. Then why, O Lucius flakus, hast thou built here an altar to our goddess Sol? She pointed to the pedestal beside them, and he, answering not a word, stretched forth his hand and drew away the covering that concealed the apex. There, in the fading light, there stood revealed the hated emblem of the Christian faith. Across, she cried, across! The sculptor raised his eyes and clasped his hands. The cross of him who died for all the world. The Vestals Faked The spirit of the dream had changed. A sense of horrible foreboding agonized the dreamer. No longer did the sculptor and the priestess look down upon Solcastra. Yet the dreamer knew all that had happened, and was happening still. The city was in tumult. The baths, the public schools, the temples were deserted. People thronged the streets. There was but one thing spoken of. An outrage on the goddess whom they all revered. Lucius flakus, the favored sculptor of Solcastra, son of Julius the Centurion, had erected on the threshold of her temple an altar to the god-man of the Nazarenes. Nor was that all. The sacred fire that should have been kept burning in the Sol's temple had been suffered to die out. If indeed, it had not been deliberately extinguished. Climax of all, Vernia, priestess of Sol, had been found in the broad light of day kneeling with bowed head before the hated emblem that profaned the grove. Amazement had given place to fury. The cry went up for punishment. A cry redoubled when it became known that the augurs foretold dire clamity for Solcastra and the citizens, as the inevitable consequence of an outrage so profane. The people feared the vengeance of the gods. Yet there were some who kept a grief-stricken silence in the midst of all the raging of the citizens, for each of the offenders was well-esteemed, and both belonged to the honored Roman families. The dreadful fate that lay in store alike for the sculptor and the priestess moved many hearts to awe and anguished apprehension. In each case the appalling penalty was as certain as the dawn of day. Lucia's flakas would be carried to the rock of Sol, high on the steepest hill that overlooked the valley, and thence cast headlong on the rocks below. For Vernia, the priestess, a yet more awful punishment was prepared, the slow starvation of a living tomb. The dreadful preparations were complete. The vestal's grave was ready, a narrow niche in the massive stone foundation of the temple, the temple of that goddess whose worship she had mocked. In this tiny cell was placed a pallet, a lamp that when lighted would burn for forty hours, and a small quantity of food. All knew what course the funeral ceremonies would follow. The pond effects would read some prayers over the doomed priestess, but without the illustrations and other expiatory ceremonies that were used at the burial of the dead. When the last prayer had been uttered, the lictors would let her down into the vault. The entrance would be filled with slabs of stone, then covered up with earth. The awful hours, the agonizing days, would slowly pass. The lamp would flicker and the light expire. Deep silence that no shriek could pierce would shut the buried vestal from the can of all who loved her. The food would fail, then slowly, hour by hour, and day by day, the dreadful silence of the law would be fulfilled. No father, mother, lover, friend could save the victim, or by one iota lessen the torture of starvation, or that still greater torture of the brain to which her judges had condemned her. Did not the crime of which she was convicted strike out the root of the religion of the people? The maintenance of the sacred fire as a pious and propitiatory observance was not peculiar to the Romans. The Hebrews held a divine commandment. The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar, saith the Lord. It shall never go out. Undying fires were maintained in the temples of Ceres at Mantano, of Apollo at Delphos, and at Athens, and in that of Diana at Echitan. A lamp was always burning in the temple of Jupiter Amon. The ancient custom came from the Egyptians to the Greeks, and from the Greeks to the Romans, who made it a vital, essential feature of their faith. Like the veil of Astereth, in the temple of the moon goddess at Carthage, like the sacred shield which, as Pompilius avowed, had fallen from heaven, the altar fire of soul safeguarded the domestic prosperity, the political wisdom, the military supremacy of Rome in Britain. And this gross insult to the mighty goddess had been perpetrated in the midst of the festival, on the very eve of the ceremony of the blessed waters used specially on that occasion for purifying the temple of soul. It was a local event of paramount importance, for then the statue of soul was covered with flowers and anointed with perfume oil. The soli marched to the city carrying vessels, richly decorated and of beautiful design, containing water from the sacred spring. The feast lasted for three days, and during that time the Romans undertook no serious or important business. The banquets with which the festival was concluded were magnificent and costly. The edict of Pompilius in joining reverence to the gods remained unrepealed. It was obeyed in Salkastra as in Rome itself. Inscribed on tables of stone, it could be read in all the schools and temples. Let none appear in the presence of the gods but with a pure heart and sincere piety. Let none there make a vain show of ostentation of their riches, but fear lest they should thereby bring on themselves the vengeance of heaven. Let no one have peculiar gods of his own, or bring new ones into his house, or receive strange ones unless allowed by edict. Let everyone preserve in his house the oratories established by his fathers, and pay his domestic gods the worship that has always been paid to them. Let all honor the ancient gods of heaven, and the heroes whose exploits have carried them hither, such as Bacchus, Hercules, Castor, and Pollux. Let the elders be erected to the virtues which carry us up to heaven, but never to vices. These dread laws the sculptor and the priestess had impiously broken and defied. The climax was at hand. A strange loud clanger beat upon the ear, pierced by the wailing cry of weeping women. The dreamer heard the tramp of many feet, then saw a long and closely packed procession emerging from the center of the city. Slowly and solemnly the multitude advanced. The first section of the great procession reached the narrow road which wound amid the trees that beautified the hill of Saul. High up on the bearer slopes of the great hill stood out the jutting rock from which the sculptor was to take his last long gaze upon the sunlit world. A band of lictors headed the procession. Behind them, with head erect, walked Lucius Flaccus on the road to death. The trees swayed gently in the morning breeze. The birds were singing in the groves. The glory of the summer decked the land. Yet the tenderness of nature and all the splendor of the world seemed but to mock the tragedy of that slow procession. On every side was life. Life strong, abundant, free. But this one lonely man, bare-headed and white-faced, who climbed the hill, had done with life. With each step of the slow advance he drew near and near to the gate of death. The second part of the procession was led by twelve Sally, each of whom carried a shield on his left arm and a javelin in his right hand. They were dressed in habits striped with purple, girded with broad belts, and clasped with buckles of brass. On their heads they wore helmets which terminated in a point. From these men the clanger came. Sometimes they sang in concert a hymn to Saul. Sometimes they advanced with dancing step, beating time with their javelins on their shields. Next came many mourners, women and children, weeping and wringing their hands as in a funeral procession, and then a closely curtained litter, with priests on either hand followed by the pontifix, magnificently habited and carried a staff or scepter in his hand. Priestesses with bowed heads and clasped hands followed the pontifix. Then came another body of lictors, followed by a miscellaneous multitude of citizens and their families, and finally a tall centurion leading a company of soldiers. The road grew narrower, steeper, winding around the hill, and the first body of lictors, with their prisoner, had passed out of view of the company that followed, when suddenly arose a violent outcry and the clash of arms. The sculptor had turned upon his guard, seized a javelin from one of them, and mounted the steep bank beside the road. The whole procession halted in confusion. Disconcerted priests whispered and gestulated. The crowd closed up and filled the narrow way from side to side. Romans, hear me, the appeal in high-pitched, fervent tones, came from Lucius flakus, and was not answered by the people. Hear him, let him speak. The lictors at the bidding of the pontifix have turned, but being few in number were daunted by the strenuous cries of the excited crowd. The sculptor seized the moment of their irresolution and raised his voice again. Romans, spare her, he pointed to the litter. You who have sisters, daughters, restrain your rulers from an act that would disgrace a barbarous nation. Murmers and conflicting cries were raised. The priests sent messengers to the soldiers at the rear of the procession. But the crowd, closer and closer packed, rendered it difficult for the messengers to pass. Above the tumult, the pontifix cried in shrill, excited tones. The gods demand her death. Thus incited, many in the crowd shouted in assent, while others cried again. Hear Lucius flakus, hear him. Once more the sculptor raised his voice. The gods are names for priests to conjure with. For a moment, indescribable tumult prevailed. The centurion saw it in vain to force away through the dance, now struggling massive people. Again the sculptor made a passionate appeal. I implore the aid of the Roman people. I call upon my fellow citizens to save a woman. To what purpose do we expose our lives in war? Why do we defend our wives and sisters from a foreign enemy, if Rome has tyrants, who incite the people to violent and vindictive acts? Soldiers in arms, do not endure these things. Free citizens, exalt yourselves by being merciful. The frantic appeal now met with no response. Lucius flakus looked wildly round, despair and desperation in his face. He raised the javelin, and for the last time his voice was heard. Then thus, and thus only, can I safer from a cooler fate. In an instant he sprang upon the lectors who confronted him, and striking left and right, actually reached the curtains of the litter. A shudder of horror ran through all the crowd. The women shrieked. The people swayed and struggled, and the next moment it was seen that the sculptor had been beaten back, though not yet secured. He sprang upon the rock beside the road and raised the javelin high in the air. Then, Romans, if infernal gods there be, let them accept another sacrifice. Down flashed the steel, the sharp point plunged into his heart, and, throwing out his hands, he swayed into the lectors' arms. A dreadful silence fell upon the people. Then from within the thickly-curtained litter came a despairing and half-stifle shriek. With that wild, agonizing cry Zenobia awoke. The cry from the litter was her cry. It was her own voice that died away, and what was this mysterious sound rising from the valley with the mist that melted at the break of day? The sound was the same that the sculptor and the priestess had heard nearly two thousand years ago, the voice of many waters as they swept across the weir, insistent, unceasing, the monotone of doom. END OF CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER XI OF THE RATE OF DOVER A ROMANCE OF THE RAIN OF WOMEN, AD 1940, by Douglas Maury Ford. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. THE NEW AMAZONS On every side the continued rivalry between the sexes in their struggle for supremacy and national life was producing laminatable results. To this general evil now was added the new move inaugurated by the Vice President of the Council in the matter of military training. The unfortunate illness of President Jardine had facilitated the schemes of that daring leader of the woman, and it soon became apparent the preparations for enrolling large bodies of Amazons, though hitherto kept secret, in fact had been very far advanced before the memorable meeting at Queens Hall. The recruits flock from every quarter. The idea of military service or a military picnic for a few months in the Amazonian militia appealed to all sorts and conditions of girls and young women. Those who had reached the age when the resources or pleasures of home life had begun to paw. Those who saw no chance of getting married. Those who had met with disappointments in love and were stirred with the restless spirit of the times. Those who rebelled against parental rule, domestic employments, or the monotony of days spent in warehouse or office. One and all caught eagerly at the idea of a course of military training in smart uniforms, with the possibility of encountering experiences and adventures from which parents and guardians had sought to withhold them. Ready pens were at the service of the new Amazons. History and tradition were ransacked by industrious scribes in search of precedence and raw material for copy. The epic, the unofficial press organ of the Vice President boldly vaunted the capacity of women to bear arms. Who would dare to deny that women were as brave as men? In modern times the Dahomey Amazons had been a force in being. An eminent professor had made researches which went to show that the Amazons of old were real warriors. Humboldt refused to regard American Amazons as mythical, and other trustworthy authorities had confirmed his view. Then there were the shield-maidens of the Vikings, to whose existence witness was born by historical sagas. The ancient literature of Ireland set forth as a fact that men and women went alike to battle in those days. Did not a certain abbot of Iona go to Ireland to organize a movement against the custom of summoning women to join the standard and fight the enemy? In Europe, not so very long ago, the Montenegrins and Albanians called their women to arms in the hour of national extremity. The epic presented the first Amazons of England with a silken banner, embroidered with the representation of Thaustrus, the Amazonian Queen, and pointed out that, however fabulous might be the achievements of the women warriors of ancient times, modern warfare need make no similar demands on the physical strength of women. War had become a feat of science, rather than of endurance. It was no longer necessary for contending champions to engage in a trial of muscular strength. Macbeth and McDuff were not called upon to lay on until one of them cried, hold enough. Battles were fought and victories won at long range. Thin red lines and balaclava charges belong to ancient history. And if by any chance it should come to fighting at close quarters, had women shown herself lacking in courage, or even in ferocity in such encounters? Why, in every memorable riot in which the civil population had been in conflict with the soldiery, the women, again and again, had proved themselves to be the foremost in attack and the most fertile of hostile resource. Thus argued the epic, and other press advocates of the new Amazons, at the same time citing many instances of the prowess exhibited by individual women on the fields of battle. Vast numbers of young persons, supremely ignorant of life in its uglier and more dangerous aspects, thus incited, discovered that they were not, and could not, be happy at home all the year round. They wanted variety, they pine for change and excitement, and all of them were firmly persuaded that they knew much better than their elders what was good for them. In their eyes all things were not only lawful, but all things were expedient. They stood up with stolid looks, deft to remonstrances and appeals, and expressed an obstinate wish to join the Amazons. Numbers of them, being more self-willed than their parents, got their own way, and enrolled. While still larger numbers were put back as physically ineligible, but with liberty in some cases, to renew their application at a future time. That the movement had caught on, nobody could deny. That it was full of dangerous possibilities became more and more apparent every day. Xenobia, who came to London to attend the Queen's Hall meeting, had returned to Bath to Nurser Father, whose illness showed increasingly alarming symptoms. Lent and Herrick, meanwhile, was not wholly without occupation, for there were sundry private conferences between his uncle and General Hartwell, at which his presence was required. These discussions and reports became of the more importance in view of certain news from the East, and of the complications likely to arise at home in the event of the illness of the President proving fatal. Nevertheless, there were times when Lenton found himself mooning about his uncle's house and garden in a state of both mental and physical restlessness. He missed Xenobia, missed a glimpse of her on the river, or a flash of her as she sped away in the Balood to London. They had met often, and it seemed to him as if they had known each other all their lives. He would have given anything to hear the yelping of her dog, Peter, next door, because it would have betokened the presence of Peter's mistress. Before Mr. Jardine's departure for Bath, the young Canadian had sat with him and talked on many topics and on several occasions. The enormous strides which Canada had made, and was making, in the way of prosperity, greatly interested the President. Lenton, however, was astonished to find how little the man, whom Fortune had pitchforked into a foremost position in England, really knew about colonial affairs. He frequently fell into amazing geographical errors, mistakes quite comparable with that of a certain Duke of Newcastle, who announced with surprise to George II his discovery that Cape Breton was an island. Lenton liked the President, not wholly for the President's sake, but partly for the same reason that he had developed a friendly feeling towards Peter the Dog. The President, on his part, certainly had taken a fancy to him, and in those bedside conversations talked with far less reserved than he was in the habit of employing in conversations with Englishmen, particularly young Englishmen. These conversations gradually impressed Lenton with the belief that his hard-headed and successful mechanic, who found himself, thanks to the strength of a numerous and well-drilled party at the head of the state, actually discovering his own deficiencies, the educational deficiencies, the intellectual deficiencies for which dogginess and powers of oratory were no true substitute. In a word, it seemed as if, in that time of inactivity and reflection, which a bed of sickness and forces, Nicholas Jardine had begun to realize his own shortcomings as a ruler of men, his unfitness to direct the destinies of a nation great in history and still great in possibilities of recuperation, if only well and wisely led. If you should be down west, come and see me at bath, were the President's parting words. Indeed I will, said the young man heartily, and there was something in his eyes as he turned to say goodbye to Zinobia that made her color. Nothing seemed more probable to both of them at the moment than that Lenton would find himself down west, and nothing more certain than that there would be only one reason for his going there. The young man had fought his way into Queen's Hall on the night of the great meeting, solely and wholly because he had heard that Ms. Jardine was likely to be present. But he had no idea what line she was likely to adopt in reference to the momentous question under discussion. Yet the one drawback that hitherto he had found in her was her attitude, or what he feared was her attitude, towards the question of women's ascendancy. In the crush of the hot and noisy meeting, he had failed to see Zinobia on the platform, and when she rose to speak his feelings were strangely blended. Of admiration at her bearing, and of dread lest she might say something that ran counter to his own convictions. But her actual utterance astonished and delighted him, and the hostile method of the cat provoked in him such feelings of fierce resentment as he had never felt towards womanhood before. Yet there was one sentence that fell from the vice-president which caused him to be sensible of emotion of another sort. That sneering suggestion that the younger speaker must be in love excited him strangely. He felt an intimate personal concern in that scornful imputation. In love with whom? And now he had ample time in his Uncle's Riverside house, with the empty dwelling and silent garden on the other side of the hedge, to ponder the same question. The bladded, however, proved a great boon. It had been left at his disposal, and Wilton, the Jardine's engineer and skipper, was always ready to accompany him in the nair-trip. Wilton was a hard-featured little man with a soft heart and a shrewish wife, who kept the domestic nest in so spick-and-spanic condition that poor Wilton could never take his ease at home, and therefore appreciated any good and sufficient reason for getting out of it. Wilton confessed to Lent and Herrick a treacherous thought. It concerned the wife of his bosom and the new Amazons. "'Seems to me,' said the little man, as this here scheme may be a good thing in a manner of speaking. There's girls and maybe there's wives, too. That wants a bit of change. Well, that's right enough. Why not? What do you mean?' asked Lenton, wondering and amused. "'What I mean, under provisions. Mind under provisions.' Lenton laughed, but Wilton was quite serious. His thoughts engaged in a great domestic problem, his hands busy with the machinery of the blood-o'ed, in which they were just about to go aloft. Well, it's like this. I wouldn't be for letting women join a regular army, but malicious different. They'd get a holiday at government expense. When they come back they'd be more contented like with their ohms, and while they was away, well, rubbing his head with a pair of pinchers. And while they're away the men would have quite a time, eh?' left Lenton, who had heard of Wilton's family history. "'You've it it, sir. You've it it,' said Wilton, without the vestige of a smile. Not but what women has a lot to put up with, mind you. And there's times when there's kind as kind. Still, what I say is, a lot of them's never content unless they have the upper. And, and that's what's wrong with England.' Meanwhile at Bath, the condition of Nicholas Jardine had given Zinobia cause for increasing anxiety. In the hushed and tranquil days that sometimes come with October, the leaves fall of their own volition, and with scarcely perceptible sound. The hours come, and with a faint whisper or rustle of farewell, one by one they flutter down to Mother Earth. Thus also, the leaves of human life are ever falling. The sign souls of men, obedient to the immutable design, passing out from the born of time and space. In those last days, when the certainty of the end came home to him, Jardine, for the first time, began to ponder on problems to which he had scarcely given a thought in the active years of his remarkable career. Perhaps in the silence of the days, and in the deeper silence of the nights, he asked himself unconsciously those same questions which, thousands of years ago, the son of Siroch had framed for all time in language so expressive. What is man, and where to serve with he? What is his good, and what is his evil? As a drop of water unto the sea, and a gravel stone in comparison of the sand, so are a thousand years to the days of eternity. All flesh waxeth old as a garment, for the covenant from the beginning is, thou chalt thy the death. As the green leaves on a thick tree, some fall and some grow, so is the generation of flesh and blood, one cometh to an end, and another is born. Every work rodeth and consumeeth away, and the worker thereof shall go with all. One day the President startled Zenobia by asking for a Bible. She brought it wonderingly. He signed to her to read, and as she read to him, the sick man and his daughter looked up into each other's eyes with something like bewilderment. Father cried the girl passionately as she closed the book. Why did you keep it from me? Why did you do it? The dying man looked into her face with troubled gaze, and whispered something very faintly. Was it the word, forgive? A yet stranger and more terrible ordeal was in store for Zenobia. To her lot it fell to hear from her father's lips a confession that seared her to the very soul. This confession presently was embodied in his will, which two days later he dictated to his daughter. His mind was perfectly clear, though his hand could scarcely hold the pen. As a matter of precaution he insisted that the doctor and the nurse should be the attesting witnesses. The will was sealed in an envelope and placed under lock and key. When that was done, Zenobia with set face, hurried to the nearest telegraph office and sent the following message to Lent and Herrick. I implore you to come immediately, a matter of life and death. Meanwhile Jardine had settled his affairs and finished with the business of life. Like the king of old he turned his face to the wall. Yet startling things were occurring close at hand, strange occurrences within this very city of Bath. To others they were sufficiently alarming. Indeed there had been something in the nature of a panic. The first manifestation had taken place at the Grand Pump Room Hotel. The king of Bath, if he could have come to his realm again, would have encountered not a few surprises, and would have found the most famous hotel transform beyond all recognition. The examples of London, Paris, and New York had been diligently followed. There was a stately palm court with marble columns and gilded cornices. Oriental rugs and luxurious hotels had been lavishly provided. Honor raised marble terrace, during the dinner hour, a string band furnished and undercurrent for the banal remarks of the diners. There were rooms in the Adam's style, rooms in the Louis XVI style, and Charles II. Smaller dining room and a smoking room in the Elizabethan style, with inglenook and heavy-ceiling beams in oak. But the people who dined and chattered and smoked amid these surroundings were not a Elizabethan, Stuart, or Georgian in style. They were the product of the twentieth century, and were of no style at all. They lacked repose and dignity. They were self-conscious, self- assertive, believers, and encouraged to believe, in the powers of the all-mighty dollar, hustlers and bustlers, who rushed hither and thither, and did this or that without knowledge and without appreciation, and solely for the purpose of being able to say that they had done it. Everything inanimate in this twentieth century bath hotel was very beautiful. There were skillful imitations of Adams, Sheraton, and Chippendale. There were colored marbles, trophies, garlands, ornamentation of all sorts in guilt and bronze, decorative panels, with consuls and mirrors everywhere, everything being an elaborate imitation of something else and something older. But in one corner of the Grand Dining Hall was one thing real and old, the fountain of solace water, which had been brought into a decorative niche and enshrined amid elaborate allegorical figures which nobody understood. It was the typical of England. She had gained in some ways. She had lost in many more. She had acquired electric appliances, telephones, and airships, but lost in grace and picturesqueness. Frequenters of bath no longer wore wigs, laced coats, and buckled shoes. They no longer settled their little difficulties with the rapier. The ladies had discarded powder in any appreciable quantities, and patches altogether, but people of quality had vanished from the once familiar scene. Quantity had taken the place of quality everywhere. Money had proved the great key and the great leveler. There was a dead level in style and tone and appearance. Society had to be taken in the mass, instead of in the class, and nobilities were far to seek. Such were the people upon whom the panic seized, amid the clatter of knives and forks, the rattle of plates, and the popping of corks, inseparable accompaniments of the tabledote dinner-hour. The visitors started to their feet with cries of dismay. An astonishing thing had occurred. The fountain of solace water in the grotto at the end of the Great Dining Hall had suddenly burst its bounds. The pipes were forced from their position. Great volumes of orange-tinted, steaming water began to flood the room. The members of the string band, whose seats and music stands were placed among the ferns and palms, in immediate proximity to the fountain, grasped their instruments and beat a precipitate retreat. Ladies, uttering shrill cries, jumped upon chairs. There was a scene of uncontrolled confusion. In a few moments, water, almost boiling, covered the floor to the depths of several inches, and male guests and waiters, carrying the ladies on chairs or in their arms, made all haste to escape into the vestibule. At the same time the springs in the Roman baths displayed extraordinary activity. Everywhere the water rose in enormous and unprecedented volume. All the baths were hastily cleared of occupants and closed to the public, and the most astounding reports spread like wildfire through the city. The corporation officials speedily came up on the scene, and trenches were hastily cut for the purpose of carrying the overflow of water direct into the river. To the intense relief of everybody, in the course of a few hours the flood slackened. Two days later, when people had begun to think there had been no sufficient reason for their fears, came other sounds and signs of abnormal activity in the earth itself. Faint tremors shook the surrounding hills, more especially lands down, and these signs were succeeded by sundry landslips, which sent many of the hillside residents flying in terror from their houses. A huge crack presently opened in the high plateau of the hill, and from this fissure arose at intervals strong puffs of curious, reddish-tinted vapor. A Secret and a Thunderbolt President Jardine was dead. Low lay the head, and still the form of the man of whom flatters had often spoken as the uncrowned king, and Oliver II, the Cromwell of the 20th century. His, indeed, had been the power symbolized by the ancient crown, the scepter, and the orb. The vanished majesty of great dynasties, the Normans, the Plantaganets, the Tudors, the Stewards, and the House of Hanover, had but paved the way for the practical rule of this man of the people. Even yet, it is true, the jealousy of political parties had preserved. None knew for how long the title of king for a descendant of Queen Victoria. But a grudging socialistic democracy had left the legitimate monarch little more than the dignity of an august pensioner. The king was shorn of regal authority, deprived of all real prerogative of royalty, and neither expected, nor allowed to take any real part in the government of his shrunken empire. And now that the lifeless hand of the president had dropped the real scepter, whose hand was to take it up, was the reign of woman to be inaugurated on new and bolder lines, or would man in the neck of time reassert himself? The women had their leader in Catherine Kellich, a daring, unscrupulous, and energetic champion. But where was the leader of men? Everywhere the lament was uttered, if only Ren Shower back at Westminster. And everywhere the question was asked. Where is he? Is it true he is still alive? Zenobia's telegram was delivered late at night, and in the absence of Wilton it was impossible to start immediately. Before daybreak on the following morning, Linton was knocking at the door of his cottage, and in half an hour the little engineer had got the bladude into working order. It was very early on a calm autumn morning, when Linton, at a sign from Wilton, stepped on board. The bladude rolls rapidly into the air, but at first there was nothing to be seen. The atmosphere being charged with the vapor of the night, the air was warm, and the sky veiled with a misty curtain of cloud. In eight minutes they had risen a thousand feet, and the earth below was hidden from them by a woolly carpet of mist. Rising and rising still, at a height of five thousand feet, the bladude emerged from the clouds, and away in the east was seen a long, long line, bright as silver. The day was breaking, and the shadows fled away. Every moment the great silver bar lengthened and broadened, a moving miracle of the Emporion, at which the young Canadian gazed in fascination and in awe. But the marvel of marvels was to come, and it came swiftly, in that deep silence of the spheres, which is the silence of him by whom all things were made. Yes, all created things, thought Linton, filled with wonder, and the earth beneath them, still partly hidden from sight, the limitless realms of the air through which they moved, and this great orb of day was rising as if from the depths of some immeasurable crater. Presently the sun, as it climbed above the cloud rim, began to flood with pure and glorious light the rolling tracks of vapor that surrounded them, like an illimitable molten sea, whose billows glowed and gleamed beneath the darting beams. Higher and higher rose the bladude, a tiny speck in the midst of the immeasurable clouds, which ever broke and crumbled into new shapes and shreds in full light of the broadening sunshine. Already the morning mist below were in some measure dispelled, and through the breaking vapor glimpses of the earth became more plainly visible. At a height of nine thousand feet, the surrounding oceans and mountains of vapor assumed a hue of rosette violet that far or transcended the beauty of anything upon which Linton's eyes had ever looked before. While from the east a thousand golden rays, pathways of light and glory, were darted forth above the sleeping world. When they had reached a height of thirteen thousand feet, the air was almost clear, and far down below London became visible. London so mighty, yet now so insignificant, Linton could see a railway train creeping out of Paddington, like some little caterpillar on a garden path. The steam from the engine was but a thin serpentine mist, like smoke from a man's pipe. Everything below was flat and dwarfed to one mean artificial-looking plain. Away east the dome of St. Paul seemed scarcely more important than a thimble. The docks were merely an elaborate toy in sections. The rolling tams a winding ditch. The ships like little play things for young children. Yet the range of view had become enormous, and as the morning cleared Wilton pointed out hills and church steeples that were a hundred miles away. In that solemn and wonderful hour, Linton Herrick felt within himself, as Gerti did, the gyms of undeveloped faculties, faculties that men must not expect to see developed in life as it is, so far known to us. Yet there was the aspiration in his heart and soul. How glorious for the astral body to plunge into the aerial space, to look unmoved on some unfathomable abyss, to glide above the roaring seas, to mount with eagle strength to heights unthinkable. Looking upon the supernatural grandeur of this sunrise, he realized that he was in the presence of God's daily miracle. It steeped his soul in faith and thankfulness. Linton, guessing that the President was in extremis, nevertheless had hoped to be in time to bid a last farewell to the taciturn man who had shown him such friendly feeling, and of whom, as Zenobia's father, he was anxious to think the best. But when the blighted ascended on the spacious lawn of the house on Bathwick Hill, the blinds were down. The whole place wore that sad and subtle air which impresses itself upon a scene of death. There was no need to ask questions. Linton understood. A faint, half-hearted yelp from Peter was the first sound that greeted him. Presently, inside the darkened house, he awaited the coming of Peter's mistress. The door opened very quietly, and Zenobia entered, a slim, sad figure, the blackness of whose dress in that dim light heightened the pallor of her face. Her hand was in his own. He looked into her eyes. The gaze of the lover softened and chastened to that of the tender and compassionate friend. You understand how much I feel for you, he said. Yes, she answered gratefully. It was good of you to come. But in a sense it is too late. He waited quietly for what she chose to say. I mean, she added, that I hoped you could come before—before the end. But at the last it was sudden, so sudden. You have something to tell me. There is something I can do for you in your trouble. Zenobia paused for a moment, then with some effort and a faint tinge of color coming into her cheeks continued. If you had come while my father lived, I could have told him. She looked down and drew a long deep sigh of distress. I could have told him. She then went on with greater firmness. That you, if you were willing, could help us, though so late, to do an act of justice to another. Mr. Herrick, it greased me to tell you. She turned away and rested her elbows on the marble mantelpiece unable for the moment to proceed. Perhaps I know more than you suppose, he said very gently, and perhaps I can guess the rest. No, turning towards him, I won't ask you to guess. Why should you help me, unless I tell you all, everything, everything, fully and frankly? Will you read this? He took the paper the girl placed in his hands, but did not immediately unfold it. I am willing to do anything you can wish, asking no questions, he said. She looked at him with eyes that seemed to shine with grateful tears. You are good to me, I have no other friends. I am your friend, said Herrick, not without a tremor in his voice. Yours to command, always and in everything. For the moment she could not speak, but held out her hand to him impulsively. Holding the slim fingers tenderly, he bent and kissed them. That paper, she said, is my father's will. Will you read it, please? Then she sat down and turned away her face. Linton read the will. The sheets rustled as he turned them over. He folded and returned them. I knew something of this, he said quietly. Now I understand all. You need tell me no more. Is Mr. Wrenshaw still living? Is it really true that he's still alive? she said, looking up anxiously. Quite true. Thank God! Oh, God be thanked for that! It is not too late. Only too late for him to know and seek forgiveness. You mean your father? The girl bowed her head, then she burst out vehemently. It must not be softened down. I know, I feel, the horror, the wickedness of what was done. I must accept the shame, the punishment. The sins of the fathers must be visited on the children. It is the law of nature and the law of God. I want to make atonement, yet nothing can undo the past, the cruelty and the wickedness of all those years of suffering and imprisonment. Wrenshaw will not harbor revengeful or vindictive feelings, I am sure of that, Linton answered soothingly. He is a man of noble character and a Christian gentleman. And it was he, a man like that, whom my father, she paused, biting her trembling lips. Oh, it is horrible, horrible! But he repented. He was sorry. The will proves it, said Linton. Yes, it is written there, a public confession, the dying declaration of his sorrow and his shame. There shall be no concealment. He did not wish it at the last. The truth must be made known to all the world. If Wrenshaw wishes it, but I do not think he will. Where is he now? Is he ill? Is he safe? He is recovering, getting back his strength in a monastery in Herm, one of the smaller Channel Islands. Arrangements are being made for his return to England at the right moment. She stood up, interested, and excited. Yes, yes. A society has been formed. The members call themselves the Friends of the Phoenix. My uncle and General Hartwell are at the head of it. The aim is to restore Wrenshaw to power. He is the only man who can save the country in the present crisis. And you are helping? Are you one of them? He nodded. I am to bring him back to England in the Balood if I have your permission. Don't lose an hour, she cried. Don't lose an hour. Not a moment, when the time is ripe. I am waiting orders. They will reach me here. If only my father could have known this before he died. She sighed and looked up at him wistfully, then said appealingly, You will come upstairs? Lyndon bowed his head and followed her. Upstairs in the room from which the President had looked out upon the lights of Bath for the last time, the sheeted figure lay upon the bed. They paused for a moment, side by side. Then Lyndon gazed for the last time on the cold, rigid face of Nicholas Jardine. Three days later, the Sun shining through the windows of the ancient Abbey Church, fell up on Sculptor St. and Heavenward Pointing Angel, revealed the lettering on many a mural tablet dedicated to long-departed men and women, illumined the somber crowd of black-clothed worshipers, and gleamed on the silver coffin plate of the dead President. Deep organ notes rolled beneath the fretted arches as the choir and congregation, with heads bowed, raised in mournful cadence the wail of the diocese ere. Apart from the girl, by whose side Lyndon Herrick knelt, perhaps were few present who really mourned for Nicholas Jardine. But as people do at such a time, they mourned for themselves, they mourned for humanity, and recent local events, the strange convulsions of nature, with the apprehension of more terrible possibilities to come, served to accentuate the feelings of the worshipers. For the moment, at any rate, they believed in the life of the world to come. They recognized in burial of the dead that dread passing through the gate of judgment to which man, frail man, has ever been predestined. The air was full of lamentations. Day of wrath, o day of mourning, see fulfill the prophet's warning, heaven and earth in ashes burning. O what fears man's bosom rendeth, when from heaven the judge descendeth, on whose sentence all dependeth. Wondrous sound the trumpeth flingeth, through earth's sceptres it ringeth, all before the throne it bringeth. Verse after verse the solemn litany continued, O that day of tears and mourning, from the dust of earth returning, man for judgment must prepare him, sparrow God in mercy spare him. The funeral march peeled forth as the body was born from the church. Slowly the congregation dispersed, until at last only one figure remained, the solitary kneeling form of Zenobia. Within an hour after Linton had left the cemetery, he received a telegram in cypher firm Sir Robert Herrick. He gave immediate instructions to Wilton, and sent a message to Zenobia. She came to him at once. Linton looked at her with troubled eyes. There was something infinitely pathetic in the aspect of this slim, fair girl with the sunny hair, on whose face suffering and distress of spirit suddenly had set so sad a stamp. Good-bye, she answered. God grant that you may both come safely back. When Mr. Wrensche is in England, I must see him. I must tell him all. With the final pressure of her hand he turned away. However much his heart might be rung at leaving her, however hard to keep back the words of love and tenderness that rose to his lips, he must be silent for the moment. There was a task to be performed. It was the hour for action. Great issues were involved. A national crisis was at hand. That much Linton knew, but as yet did not know that the crisis was to assume a double and appalling complexity. A thunderbolt had been hurled against England from an unexpected quarter. A swift and staggering blow, well timed in the hour of Jardine's death, had been levelled against the remaining pillars of her once proud empire. The Raid of Eagles It was the suddenness of the calamity that staggered humanity. One day not a cloud in the overseas sky, and the next a catastrophe that petrified the nation. In London the horse-croaking notes of the news vendors, the ravens of the press, fill the streets and squares, and flaring placards, displayed in every quarter, attracted the notice of ever-increasing crowds. Men wrangled, and even fought over copies of the papers, and addition after addition was reeled off to meet the enormous public demand. It was the news from Dover that created this unparalleled excitement. An inconceivable thing had happened. By means of a crafty strategy, a mixed body of American and German troops had seized and were in possession of Fort Warden. Immediately the wildest and most conflicting accounts were in circulation. But separating the shaft from the weed, the more responsible of London journals presently set forth a bold statement of the facts. Facts that were alleged to be beyond dispute. The statements published in these papers indeed were said to be authorized by the Chiefs of the Intelligent Department at the War Office. Further details, however, constantly were coming over the wires, and it was known that large bodies of regular and territorial troops were being hurried to the aid of the garrison at Dover. The first report, Viz, that foreigners had obtained a foothold by means of the Channel Tunnel was officially contradicted. The simple truth was, as follows. On the previous evening a Hamburg liner had entered the commercial harbour, and some hundreds of her passengers at once had landed on the jetty. There was nothing remarkable or suspicious in such an occurrence. The great German liner was a familiar and frequent visitor to the port. Though it was noticed that a large number of passengers came ashore, that circumstance was plausibly explained by the statement of the ship's officers, who said that something had gone wrong with her machinery. It would take the engineers two hours or more to put right the defect. What more natural than that most of the passengers should land and fill up the time by the inspection of the points of interest in the town? The harbour officials estimated that altogether some three hundred men had come ashore. They had the appearance of tourists. The evening was cold, and wearing travelling caps and capes or ulsters. The visitors passed briskly across the jetty and disappeared, in little parties of eight or nine, into the town. The townspeople, as they were putting up their shutters, noticed the strangers as they passed through the streets. It was remarked that they spoke to each other in low tones or not at all. Also that they did not loiter or stare about them like ordinary sightseers. The general impression was that they had only landed to stretch their legs and meant to climb the hill and then come back again. They certainly did climb the hill, but none of them returned. It was not until an hour later that an amazing rumour spread throughout the town. The story was brought by bands of excited Amazons belonging to those whom Fort Warden had temporarily been given up for gunnery practice. Their pale faces and distraught appearance at once made it clear that something very serious had happened. Yet the townspeople were incredulous. The things seemed so absurd, so impossible. These girl soldiers, they thought, were the victims of some monstrous practical joke or of hysterical hallucination. Who could possibly credit such a tale? But the Amazons, in trembling tones and with nervous gestures, declared that it was true. Their numbers rapidly increased. Some of them came tearing down the castle hill in uncontrollable alarm. All of them, in one way or another, verified the amazing story. It was this. A band of foreigners comprising 150 Americans and 150 soldierly Germans, armed with revolvers, had rushed Fort Warden. The approaches were open at the time, and guarded only by a few artillerymen. It was visitor's day, and the visitors were departing as the foreigners arrived. The struggle was of the briefest. Those of the artillerymen who showed fight had been instantly shot down. The others had been secured, together with the chief gunnery instructor and the head of the chemical department, a non-combatant from whom the foreigners had violently forced such information as they needed. As for the Amazons themselves, they had not been maltreated. But, what was worse, many had been insultingly kissed or roughly caressed by the invaders. With all speed and no ceremony, they had been contemptuously bundled out of the fort, and here they were to tell the tale. A staff officer at the local headquarters, to whom the report was carried by a breathless tradesman, lost no time in ringing up Fort Warden. For some time there was no reply. He rang angrily again and yet again. At last came some unintelligible response. He swore irritably, and then roared an inquiry. Are you there? Who is it? Still no reply. Why don't you answer? What's this I hear about the fort? The only answer was an inarticulate growl. Why the devil don't you speak? Who are you? Then at last came an intelligible response, in English with a strong American intonation. Guess you better come and see. How and why had this dastardly combined attack on England come to pass? The story can be briefly told. Great Britain had long been regarded by Americans as old and stricken in years, not merely as the old country, but as a country that was in its dottedge, old and played out. America was young and lusty, and quite persuaded that the old folk at home were too feeble to retain the management of the old estate. Already the United States, in the scramble for British possessions, had pocketed some nice little pickings. The West Indian Islands, the Bermudas, and British Guyana had been virtually surrendered to Washington. England, for years but in vain, had sought to placate this big and blustering branch of the ancient race whenever family friction had arisen. Again and again weaker members of the clan, poor relations like Newfoundland, had been sacrificed to the demands of the United States. But some appetites are insatiable, some ambitions unbounded. The new order of American politicians had arisen, men who aimed at a great federation of the Anglo-Saxon race, with America not as the junior partner, but as the head and ruling spirit of that federation. When the possessor of a great estate becomes imbecile or lapses into second childhood, his affairs are taken out of his hands, for his own good and for the due protection of his solicitous relations. That, argued the plotters, was just what was needed in the case of Great Britain. The indications of decrepitude had been slowly, but to keen observers, convincingly manifested during a period of more than thirty years. Thirty years ago Englishmen would have scouted the idea of an American invasion, or the idea of America in alliance with Germany against Great Britain. Monstrous! Was not blood thicker than water? Were not the American people our own kith and kin? Yes, but times had changed, while human nature had remained the same. America had become a cosmopolitan country. From all parts of Europe, and especially from Germany, men had migrated to the United States. Thither too, swarms of the Yellow from China and Japan had insidiously made their way in spite of opposition, and year after year, the Black population of the Great Continent had enormously increased, while the Anglo-Saxon birth-rate had rapidly declined. The British element in America thus had been absorbed, submerged. The old and consolatory theory of family ties, like other popular fallacies, fondly cherished in spite of the march of events, at last had been convincingly exploded by the raid on Dover. Signs of the coming times had not been wanting. England, fearing a German invasion, had kept her fleets in home waters. The great scheme of the Imperial defense, much discussed in 1909, had not been perfected. As far back as the earthquake of 1906 in Jamaica, the growing inability of England to look after her outline possessions had been strikingly instanced. No British squadron was near at hand in that hour of trial to sucker the afflicted islanders. Was it not an American, not an English admiral, who had come to the rescue of the British colony? Had not the English governor been summarily suppressed by the home government, because he had ventured sarcastically to point out that American assistance, however kindly meant, was not required, and had not been regulated by the accepted law of nations? From that day forth, and there had been other similar examples, the more enterprising politicians of Washington took an increasing interest in British affairs, and dreamed dreams in which the old familiar colors on the map of the world, where once upon a time red was so predominant, underwent some radical and striking alterations. Of course, there was one part of the British dominions, and that very near to the center of the British government, in which America had taken the closest interest for more than a century. There was Ireland, the immigrated population of which had become part of the mixed population of the United States. The Irish vote, moreover, had become of increasing importance to those who wished to hold the helm at Washington, and in truth it was the old and long cherished idea of planting the American standard on Irish soil that gradually had led up to this daring exploit, the news of which the great guns of Fort Warden were booming out to all the world. It was not really surprising that men, with so marked an aptitude for commercial enterprise as the American wire-polars, should have turned covetous eyes towards the Isle of Arran. Ireland was the great junction for the ship-line between the old country and the new, an unexploited island of noble harbors, rich in mountain, lake, and river. A certain senator, Hiram P. Dexter, a Prince of Tammany, who had become President of the United States, crystallized the idea thus. England had colonized America. Why should not America recolonize depopulated Ireland? She could then dominate her former senior partner in the ancient British firm and make things hum. The idea was cute, inspiring. Nevertheless, it was certain that, however anxious she might be for peace and quietness, Britannia could never tolerate another flag so near her own center of government. The line must be drawn somewhere. Hiram P. Dexter and his friends realized that for dominion in Ireland, even under the jardine dispensation and in the reign of woman, England must needs fight, fight to the bitter end, unless indeed by some master stroke of policy and daring she could first be disabled by the strong man armed. Hence the plan of campaign, by unscrupulous strategy to seize the key of the castle, the stronghold of Dover, while at the same time the squadrons of the two eagles menace the coast of Ireland itself and landed troops at various points. It was an infamy. It was a dastardly and fratricidal act. It was a combination worthy of Herod and Pilate. All these things were said, but history is not made or unmade by the aid of epithets. History reckons with great national force, race problems, and the bedrock of accomplished facts. Abundant precedents could have been cited, and nothing succeeds like success. In this case, if the attempt should fail, it might be explained away as the mad rate of a band of freebooters. Those who survived might be nominally called to account, just as had happened fifty years earlier after the feudal raid of a certain Dr. Jamison and others, when one Kruger was king of the trans-fail. In either event, whatever England might think and say of this stab in the back, there were millions in the states who would applaud the blow as smart beyond anything that had ever been attempted by American presidents, and Hiram P. Dexter would go down to posterity as a Napoleon of Enterprise, the man who realized that even America was not big enough in these mid-century days for the mixed peoples of the states, that the dominant race in that mass population needed more room to turn round in, more scope for hustling, fresh fields and pastures new for the feverish multiplication of the almighty dollar. But there was another nation to be reckoned with. The two greatest competitors for world power and commerce were Germany and America, and Germany and America did not want to fight at present. A system of mutual concessions with mental reservations better suited the provisional purposes of Berlin and Washington at any rate for the time being. Clearly nothing could be done by way of aggression in Europe without taking Germany into account. So the business-like president of the states had engineered with the Germans what brokers and auctioneers describe as big knockout. They had come to an understanding about England, an understanding provisional and tentative. Again, thirty years ago Englishmen would have scouted such an idea. But nothing stands still. We ripe and ripe, and then from hour to hour we wrought and wrought. So also with the empires of the world. The law of the survival of the fittest operates in all created things. Britain herself had been one of the chief exponents of this immutable law. Not by means of peace conferences and a tentative reduction of armaments, coupled with pious platitudes concerning methods of barbarism, otherwise war, had her great empire been built up. With the strong hand in past times we had been labored to feed and wealthy Spain. With force of arms we had driven from the seas Holland, once our great and powerful rival for the trade of the world. We had humbled Napoleon and the pride of France on the field of Waterloo. India had been taken with the sword. With shot and shell and reeking bayonet, these and other things were done. And as we had done unto others, by reason of the necessities of national existence, so we might rationally have expected that others in their turn would do unto us. History, though in our self absorption we forget it, is full of dramatic surprises, and suddenly develops startling situations. The rise of Japan had been a staggering enterprise, both for Europe and America, and indeed had become a great factor in the latest departure of American policy. There had been other shocks, and there were more to follow. Over all the white nations there hung a dark and ominous shadow, ever increasing, caused by the rise and rapid expansion of the yellow and black. The east was filling up, and in as much as Great Britain still held much coveted territory in the west, and had money in her banks. It was round and against the British Isles that the spirit of annexation still watchfully hovered, ready to pounce. The rate at Dover, whether failing or succeeding, therefore must be viewed as a sign, a lurid, awful sign of altered times. The hour was well chosen. Nicholas Jardine, the man of the people, lay dead. The nation was in the throes of a domestic crisis, the champion of the women straining every nerve to take the dead president's place, and pursue a program which would satisfy the special aspirations of her sex. Yet it could not be believed that such a nation, a race originally so splendid in fiber, so dogged in courage, would take the onslaught of her rivals lying down. England, surely now at the eleventh hour, would be roused to action. England would fight and even dying breath defiance to her foes. But alas, England sorely needed leadership, the potent magic of some great personality to inspire her people with courage and enthusiasm. In this hour of dire distress, Wrenshaw, the only leader who could have commanded a widespread patriotic following, was lost to England, lying scared and beaten, it was said, chained like a dog in the prison of the Madi. So thought most of those who thought of him at all. Yet, even while his name was on their lips, the phoenix was reviving. Sir Robert Harrick knew it. General Hartwell and Linton knew it, and there were others, quick of herring, keen of sight, who had already heard the flapping of the wings, saw the phoenix rising from the ashes of the past and speeding from afar towards our violated shores.