th instinctively clasped their hands to
their ears, expecting such a sound as would deafen them for ever; but
none came, for the explosion had taken place beyond the limits of the
earth's atmosphere. The whole sky was now filled from zenith to horizon
with a pale, golden, luminous mist, and through this the moon and stars
began to shine dimly.

Then a blast of burning air swept shrieking and howling across the
earth, for now the planet Terra was rushing at her headlong speed of
nearly seventy thousand miles an hour through the ocean of fire-mist
into which the shattered comet had been dissolved. Then this passed. The
cool wind of night followed it, and the moon and stars shone down once
more undimmed through the pure and cloudless ether.

Until now there had been silence. Men and women looked at each other and
clasped hands; and then Tom Bowcock, standing just outside the marquee
with his arm round his wife's shoulders, lifted up his mighty baritone
voice and sang the lines:

"Praise God from whom all blessings flow!"

Hundreds and then thousands, then millions of voices took up the
familiar strain, and so from the tops of the Lancashire moors the chorus
rolled on from village to village and town to town, until with one
voice, though with many tongues, east and west were giving thanks for
the Great Deliverance.

But the man who, under Providence, had wrought it, seemed deaf and blind
to all this. He only felt a soft trembling clasp round his right hand,
and he only heard Auriole's voice whispering his name.

The next moment a stronger grip pulled his left hand out of his coat
pocket, bringing the revolver with it, and Mr Parmenter's voice, shaken
by rare emotion, said, loudly enough for all in the marquee to hear:

"We may thank God and you, Gilbert Lennard, that there's still a world
with living men and women on it, and there's one woman here who's going
to live for you only till death do you part. She told me all about it
last night. You've won her fair and square, and you're going to have
her. I did have other views for her, but I've changed my mind, because I
have learnt other things since then. But anyhow, with no offence to this
distinguished company, I reckon you're the biggest man on earth just
now."

Soon after daybreak on the first of May, one of the airships that had
been guarding Whernside dropped on the top of Winter Hill, and the
captain gave Lennard a cablegram which read thus: