rible Golgotha strewn with
the bodies of the human race? Suddenly, I find myself laughing.

"Halloa, young fellah!" says Lord John, staring at me in surprise. "We
could do with a joke in these hard times. What was it, then?"

"I was thinking of all the great unsolved questions," I answer, "the
questions that we spent so much labor and thought over. Think of
Anglo-German competition, for example--or the Persian Gulf that my old
chief was so keen about. Whoever would have guessed, when we fumed and
fretted so, how they were to be eventually solved?"

We fall into silence again. I fancy that each of us is thinking of
friends that have gone before. Mrs. Challenger is sobbing quietly, and
her husband is whispering to her. My mind turns to all the most unlikely
people, and I see each of them lying white and rigid as poor Austin does
in the yard. There is McArdle, for example, I know exactly where he is,
with his face upon his writing desk and his hand on his own telephone,
just as I heard him fall. Beaumont, the editor, too--I suppose he is
lying upon the blue-and-red Turkey carpet which adorned his sanctum. And
the fellows in the reporters' room--Macdona and Murray and Bond. They
had certainly died hard at work on their job, with note-books full of
vivid impressions and strange happenings in their hands. I could just
imagine how this one would have been packed off to the doctors, and that
other to Westminster, and yet a third to St. Paul's. What glorious rows
of head-lines they must have seen as a last vision beautiful, never
destined to materialize in printer's ink! I could see Macdona among the
doctors--"Hope in Harley Street"--Mac had always a weakness for
alliteration. "Interview with Mr. Soley Wilson." "Famous Specialist says
'Never despair!'" "Our Special Correspondent found the eminent scientist
seated upon the roof, whither he had retreated to avoid the crowd of
terrified patients who had stormed his dwelling. With a manner which
plainly showed his appreciation of the immense gravity of the occasion,
the celebrated physician refused to admit that every avenue of hope had
been closed." That's how Mac would start. Then there was Bond; he would
probably do St. Paul's. He fancied his own literary touch. My word,
what a theme for him! "Standing in the little gallery under the dome and
looking down upon that packed mass of despairing humanity, groveling at
this last instant before a Power which the