's
nest of the windvane keeper. To this accordingly Graham was conducted
by his attendant. Lincoln, with a graceful compliment to the attendant,
apologised for not accompanying them, on account of the present pressure
of administrative work.

Higher even than the most gigantic wind-wheels hung this crow's nest,
a clear thousand feet above the roofs, a little disc-shaped speck on a
spear of metallic filigree, cable stayed. To its summit Graham was drawn
in a little wire-hung cradle. Halfway down the frail-seeming stem was
a light gallery about which hung a cluster of tubes--minute they looked
from above--rotating slowly on the ring of its outer rail. These were
the specula, _en rapport_ with the wind-vane keeper's mirrors, in one
of which Ostrog had shown him the coming of his rule. His Japanese
attendant ascended before him and they spent nearly an hour asking and
answering questions.

It was a day full of the promise and quality of spring. The touch of the
wind warmed. The sky was an intense blue and the vast expanse of London
shone dazzling under the morning sun. The air was clear of smoke and
haze, sweet as the air of a mountain glen.

Save for the irregular oval of ruins about the House of the Council and
the black flag of the surrender that fluttered there, the mighty city
seen from above showed few signs of the swift revolution that had, to
his imagination, in one night and one day, changed the destinies of the
world. A multitude of people still swarmed over these ruins, and the
huge openwork stagings in the distance from which started in times of
peace the service of aeroplanes to the various great cities of Europe
and America, were also black with the victors. Across a narrow way of
planking raised on trestles that crossed the ruins a crowd of workmen
were busy restoring the connection between the cables and wires of the
Council House and the rest of the city, preparatory to the transfer
thither of Ostrog's headquarters from the Wind-Vane buildings.

For the rest the luminous expanse was undisturbed. So vast was its
serenity in comparison with the areas of disturbance, that presently
Graham, looking beyond them, could almost forget the thousands of men
lying out of sight in the artificial glare within the quasi-subterranean
labyrinth, dead or dying of the overnight wounds, forget the improvised
wards with the hosts of surgeons, nurses, and bearers feverishly busy,
forget, indeed,' all the wonder, consternati