it was suggestive of the worst possible fears.

I looked about for something with which I could prod into the debris.
The only thing available was a great twisted steel lightning rod that
reared up through the ashes. The result of my effort was a discovery
from which I recoiled.

For a moment I found it expedient to step away from the place. In doing
so, I unconsciously dragged the piece of lightning rod along with me.
Behind a screen of foliage I sat down weakly. Presently, my eyes
followed along that lightning rod, and I noted that one end was freshly
broken where I had bent it until it snapped in two. But the other end
had been the tip that pointed skyward above the house. This I now saw
was fused and melted in a way that no heat of a burning wood could have
possibly accomplished.

I need write but little of the duties that followed. Suffice to say,
that every paper that might have revealed more than my slight knowledge
of Spain's origin or connections had been destroyed. The county records
yielded nothing except the deed to his property purchased the year
before I met him. There was nothing for me to do but turn matters over
to the local authorities and let the law take its course.

I returned to New York and slept off the weariness the ordeal had
engendered.

Then I went to my desk and produced my draft of "The Book of Gud" and
turned slowly through it. It was all there, a complete manuscript, but
including many things on which our differences of opinion had not been
reconciled--and Dan Spain was dead!

Gradually the responsibilities of my position dawned upon me. I was
joint author of "The Book of Gud." However, my "partner in crime" was
dead. We had written much of the prose together although much of it was
by Spain alone. The verse was mine.

How helpless I felt with this gigantic task staring me in the face!

Sensing keenly the sacred trust of fidelity to the intent of a dead
author, I did not feel at liberty to make the changes in Spain's draft
that I felt should be made. Yet, if my name were to be on the jacket of
this book, I did not feel that I could possibly let some of the things
in Spain's draft pass without registering my protest. Conversely I must,
in all fairness, concede that he had felt the same about some of my
lines.

My decision on going over the work the first time was that all I could
do was to let the manuscript pass on to the world exactly as it was when
God's lightning stilled for