beneath this temporary edifice.

The stage had a small higher portion on which Graham stood with Ostrog
and Lincoln close beside him, a little in advance of a group of minor
officers. A broader lower stage surrounded this quarter deck, and on
this were the black-uniformed guards of the revolt armed with the little
green weapons whose very names Graham still did not know. Those standing
about him perceived that his eyes wandered perpetually from the swarming
people in the twilight ruins about him to the darkling mass of the White
Council House, whence the Trustees would presently come, and to the
gaunt cliffs of ruin that encircled him, and so back to the people. The
voices of the crowd swelled to a deafening tumult.

He saw the Councillors first afar off in the glare of one of the
temporary lights that marked their path, a little group of white figures
blinking in a black archway. In the Council House they had been in
darkness. He watched them approaching, drawing nearer past first this
blazing electric star and then that; the minatory roar of the crowd over
whom their power had lasted for a hundred and fifty years marched along
beside them. As they drew still nearer their faces came out weary, white
and anxious. He saw them blinking up through the glare about him and
Ostrog. He contrasted their strange cold looks in the Hall of Atlas....
Presently he could recognise several of them; the man who had rapped
the table at Howard, a burly man with a red beard, and one
delicate-featured, short, dark man with a peculiarly long skull. He
noted that two were whispering together and looking behind him at
Ostrog. Next there came a tall, dark and handsome man, walking downcast.
Abruptly he glanced up, his eyes touched Graham for a moment, and
passed beyond him to Ostrog. The way that had been made for them was so
contrived that they had to march past and curve about before they came
to the sloping path of planks that ascended to the stage where their
surrender was to be made.

"The Master, the Master! God and the Master," shouted the people. "To
hell with the Council!" Graham looked at their multitudes, receding
beyond counting into a shouting haze, and then at Ostrog beside him,
white and steadfast and still. His eye went again to the little group
of White Councillors. And then he looked up at the familiar quiet stars
overhead. The marvellous element in his fate was suddenly vivid. Could
that be his indeed, that little life in