may hold
this for an old man's fancy if you will, but it shall surely come to
pass in the fulness of time, which is now at hand; and then, where I
have destroyed, may you, if you will, build up again!"

"What do you mean? You are speaking in parables."

"Which shall soon be made plain. You read in your newspaper this
morning of a mysterious movement that is taking place throughout the
Buddhist peoples of the East. They believe that Buddha has returned
to earth, reincarnated, to lead them to the conquest of the world.
Now, as you know, every fourth man, woman, and child in the whole
human race is a Buddhist, and the meaning of this movement is that
that mighty mass of humanity, pent up and stagnant for centuries, is
about to burst its bounds and overflow the earth in a flood of
desolation and destruction.

"The nations of the West know nothing of this, and are unsheathing
the sword to destroy each other. Like a house divided against itself,
their power shall be brought to confusion, and their empire be made
as a wilderness. And over the starving and war-smitten lands of
Europe these Eastern swarms shall sweep, innumerable as the locusts,
resistless as the pestilence, and what fire and sword have spared
they shall devour, and nothing shall be left of all the glory of
Christendom but its name and the memory of its fall!"

Natas spoke his frightful prophecy like one entranced, and when he
had finished he let his head fall forward for a moment on his breast,
as though he were exhausted. Then he raised it again, and went on in
a calmer voice--

"There is but one power under heaven that can stand between the
Western world and this destruction, and that is the race to which you
belong. It is the conquering race of earth, and the choicest fruit of
all the ages until now. It is nearly two hundred million strong, and
it is united by the ties of kindred blood and speech the wide world
over.

"But it is also divided by petty jealousies, and mean commercial
interests. But for these the world might be an Anglo-Saxon planet.
Would it not be a glorious task for you, who are the flower of this
splendid race, so to unite it that it should stand as a solid barrier
of invincible manhood before which this impending flood of yellow
barbarism should dash itself to pieces like the cloud-waves against
the granite summits of the eternal hills?"

"A glorious task, truly!" exclaimed Tremayne, once more springing
from his chair and beginn