tric chair. It was in
2255 that his name was next changed for him. It was in that year that
the Great Mutiny took place. In that region west of the Rocky Mountains,
seventeen millions of slaves strove bravely to overthrow their masters.
Who knows, if Sly Vange had not lived, but that they would have
succeeded? But Sly Vange was very much alive. The masters gave him
supreme command of the situation. In eight months of fighting, one
million and three hundred and fifty thousand slaves were killed. Vange,
Bill Vange, Sly Vange, killed them, and he broke the Great Mutiny. And
he was greatly rewarded, and so red were his hands with the blood of
the slaves that thereafter he was called "Bloody Vange." You see, my
brothers, what interesting things are to be found in the books when one
can read them. And, take my word for it, there are many other things,
even more interesting, in the books. And if you will but study with me,
in a year's time you can read those books for yourselves--ay, in six
months some of you will be able to read those books for yourselves.

Bloody Vange lived to a ripe old age, and always, to the last, was he
received in the councils of the masters; but never was he made a master
himself. He had first opened his eyes, you see, in a slave pen. But oh,
he was well rewarded! He had a dozen palaces in which to live. He, who
was no master, owned thousands of slaves. He had a great pleasure yacht
upon the sea that was a floating palace, and he owned a whole island in
the sea where toiled ten thousand slaves on his coffee plantations. But
in his old age he was lonely, for he lived apart, hated by his brothers,
the slaves, and looked down upon by those he had served and who refused
to be his brothers. The masters looked down upon him because he had
been born a slave. Enormously wealthy he died; but he died horribly,
tormented by his conscience, regretting all he had done and the red
stain on his name.

But with his children it was different. They had not been born in the
slave pen, and by the special ruling of the Chief Oligarch of that time,
John Morrison, they were elevated to the master class. And it was then
that the name of Vange disappears from the page of history. It becomes
Vanderwater, and Jason Vange, the son of Bloody Vange, becomes Jason
Vanderwater, the founder of the Vanderwater line. But that was
three hundred years ago, and the Vanderwaters of to-day forget their
beginnings and imagine that somehow t