an old man who sat not far away he called out, "I
know you, Andrew, from that great scar on your forehead. Come here,
Andrew, and that quickly."

The old man seemed neither to hear nor understand him, but sat like
all the rest, blinking and unresponsive.

"Andrew," he cried, "you must know me! Think of Brum and South Melton
Street. Be an Englishman, Andrew--come and shake hands!"

The man looked at him with staring, timid eyes; then shuddered all
over, scrambled up from the ground, and ran away.

"It does not matter," murmured the King of the World. "There are no
men left. I have lived in the desert, and I saw there that which I
would I had seen long ago--visions that came too late to warn me. For
a time my Plan has conquered; but that greater Plan shall be
victorious in the end."

I was trying to stanch the wounds I had inflicted, and I hoped to
comfort him, but he thrust me aside.

"I know that no man of this generation could have killed me. I have
nothing in common with you, bright Spirit. It was not you I loved, not
for you I fought and struggled, but for these. I do not want to be
reminded, by that light of reason shining in your eyes, of what we
were all of us, once. It was a heroic age, when good and evil lived
together, and misery bound man to man. Yet I will not regret what I
have done. I ask forgiveness not of God, but of Man; and I claim the
gratitude of thousands who are unknown, and unknown shall ever remain.
For ages and ages God must reign over an empty kingdom, since I have
brought to an end one great cycle of centuries. Tell me, Stranger, was
I not great in my day?"

He fell back, and the Wind that took his Spirit carried me also into
space.

VII

THE LAST MEN

The Wind bore me onwards more than forty years, and I found seated
beside a granary half-a-dozen wrinkled and very aged men, whose faces
were set with a determination to go on living to the bitter end. They
were delirious, and naked; they tore their white beards; they mumbled
and could not speak. The great beasts came out of the forest by night
softly and gazed at them with their lantern eyes, but never did them
harm. All day long they ate and slept or wandered a little aimlessly
about. During that year four of them died.

Afterwards I saw the last two men. One of them was lying on the ground
gasping passionately for breath, his withered limbs awry with pain. I
could see that he had been a magnificent man in his youth. As h