ey've slipped back. In my young days
speaking of the Council was like an ignorant man speaking of God. We
didn't think they could do wrong. We didn't know of their women and all
that! Or else I've got wiser.

"Men are strange," said the old man. "Here are you, young and
ignorant, and me--sevendy years old, and I might reasonably be
forgetting--explaining it all to you short and clear.

"Sevendy," he said, "sevendy, and I hear and see--hear better than I
see. And reason clearly, and keep myself up to all the happenings of
things. Sevendy!

"Life is strange. I was twaindy before Ostrog was a baby. I remember him
long before he'd pushed his way to the head of the Wind Vanes Control.
I've seen many changes. Eh! I've worn the blue. And at last I've come to
see this crush and darkness and tumult and dead men carried by in heaps
on the ways. And all his doing! All his doing!"

His voice died away in scarcely articulate praises of Ostrog

Graham thought. "Let me see," he said, "if I have it right."

He extended a hand and ticked off points upon his fingers. "The Sleeper
has been asleep--"

"Changed," said the old man.

"Perhaps. And meanwhile the Sleeper's property grew in the hands of
Twelve Trustees, until it swallowed up nearly all the great ownership of
the world. The Twelve Trustees--by virtue of this property have become
virtually masters of the world. Because they are the paying power--just
as the old English Parliament used to be--"

"Eh!" said the old man. "That's so--that's a good comparison. You're not
so--"

"And now this Ostrog--has suddenly revolutionised the world by waking
the Sleeper--whom no one but the superstitious, common people had ever
dreamt would wake again--raising the Sleeper to claim his property from
the Council, after all these years."

The old man endorsed this statement with a cough. "It's strange,"
he said, "to meet a man who learns these things for the first time
tonight."

"Aye," said Graham, "it's strange."

"Have you been in a Pleasure City?" said the old man. "All my life I've
longed--" He laughed. "Even now," he said, "I could enjoy a little
fun. Enjoy seeing things, anyhow." He mumbled a sentence Graham did not
understand.

"The Sleeper--when did he awake?" said Graham suddenly.

"Three days ago."

"Where is he?"

"Ostrog has him. He escaped from the Council not four hours ago. My
dear sir, where were you at the time? He was in the hall of the
markets--where the fi