had
listened to his odd story of "Men from Mars."

I came down and went into the dining room. There were the mutton
and the bread, both far gone now in decay, and a beer bottle
overturned, just as I and the artilleryman had left them. My home was
desolate. I perceived the folly of the faint hope I had cherished so
long. And then a strange thing occurred. "It is no use," said a
voice. "The house is deserted. No one has been here these ten days.
Do not stay here to torment yourself. No one escaped but you."

I was startled. Had I spoken my thought aloud? I turned, and the
French window was open behind me. I made a step to it, and stood
looking out.

And there, amazed and afraid, even as I stood amazed and afraid,
were my cousin and my wife--my wife white and tearless. She gave a
faint cry.

"I came," she said. "I knew--knew----"

She put her hand to her throat--swayed. I made a step forward, and
caught her in my arms.

CHAPTER TEN

THE EPILOGUE

I cannot but regret, now that I am concluding my story, how little
I am able to contribute to the discussion of the many debatable
questions which are still unsettled. In one respect I shall certainly
provoke criticism. My particular province is speculative philosophy.
My knowledge of comparative physiology is confined to a book or two,
but it seems to me that Carver's suggestions as to the reason of the
rapid death of the Martians is so probable as to be regarded almost as
a proven conclusion. I have assumed that in the body of my narrative.

At any rate, in all the bodies of the Martians that were examined
after the war, no bacteria except those already known as terrestrial
species were found. That they did not bury any of their dead, and the
reckless slaughter they perpetrated, point also to an entire ignorance
of the putrefactive process. But probable as this seems, it is by no
means a proven conclusion.

Neither is the composition of the Black Smoke known, which the
Martians used with such deadly effect, and the generator of the
Heat-Rays remains a puzzle. The terrible disasters at the Ealing
and South Kensington laboratories have disinclined analysts for further
investigations upon the latter. Spectrum analysis of the black powder
points unmistakably to the presence of an unknown element with a
brilliant group of three lines in the green, and it is possible that
it combines with argon to form a compound which acts at once with
deadly