been murder, hon. It wouldn't have killed him. It wasn't
such a terrible thing to do. It just would have fixed him up so he'd be
able to go any time God decided He wanted him."

"What's going to happen next, Em?" said Lou hollowly. "What's he going
to do?"

* * * * *

Lou and Emerald stayed fearfully awake almost all night, waiting to see
what Gramps was going to do. But not a sound came from the sacred
bedroom. Two hours before dawn, they finally dropped off to sleep.

At six o'clock, they arose again, for it was time for their generation
to eat breakfast in the kitchenette. No one spoke to them. They had
twenty minutes in which to eat, but their reflexes were so dulled by the
bad night that they had hardly swallowed two mouthfuls of egg-type
processed seaweed before it was time to surrender their places to their
son's generation.

Then, as was the custom for whoever had been most recently disinherited,
they began preparing Gramps' breakfast, which would presently be served
to him in bed, on a tray. They tried to be cheerful about it. The
toughest part of the job was having to handle the honest-to-God eggs and
bacon and oleomargarine, on which Gramps spent so much of the income
from his fortune.

"Well," said Emerald, "I'm not going to get all panicky until I'm sure
there's something to be panicky about."

"Maybe he doesn't know what it was I busted," Lou said hopefully.

"Probably thinks it was your watch crystal," offered Eddie, their son,
who was toying apathetically with his buckwheat-type processed sawdust
cakes.

"Don't get sarcastic with your father," said Em, "and don't talk with
your mouth full, either."

"I'd like to see anybody take a mouthful of this stuff and _not_ say
something," complained Eddie, who was 73. He glanced at the clock. "It's
time to take Gramps his breakfast, you know."

"Yeah, it is, isn't it?" said Lou weakly. He shrugged. "Let's have the
tray, Em."

"We'll both go."

Walking slowly, smiling bravely, they found a large semi-circle of
long-faced Fords standing around the bedroom door.

Em knocked. "Gramps," she called brightly, "_break_-fast is _rea_-dy."

There was no reply and she knocked again, harder.

The door swung open before her fist. In the middle of the room, the
soft, deep, wide, canopied bed, the symbol of the sweet by-and-by to
every Ford, was empty.

A sense of death, as unfamiliar to the Fords as Zoroastrianism or the
cau