door.

As he did so Howard appeared, a little tray in one
hand and his heavy face downcast. He started, looked

up, the door slammed behind him, the tray tilted side-
ways, and the steel wedge struck him behind the ear.

He went down like a felled tree, and lay as he fell
athwart the floor of the outer room. The man who

had struck him bent hastily, studied his face for a
moment, rose, and returned to his work at the door.

"Your poison!" said a voice in Graham's ear.
Then abruptly they were in darkness. The innumerable

cornice lights had been extinguished. Graham saw
the aperture of the ventilator with ghostly

snow whirling above it and dark figures moving hastily.
Three knelt on the van. Some dim thing--a

ladder was being lowered through the opening, and
a hand appeared holding a fitful yellow light.

He had a moment of hesitation. But the manner
of these men, their swift alacrity, their words, marched

so completely with his own fears of the Council, with
his idea and hope of a rescue, that it lasted not a

moment. And his people awaited him!
"I do not understand," he said, "I trust. Tell me

what to do."
The man with the cut brow gripped Graham's arm.

"Clamber up the ladder," he whispered. "Quick.
They will have heard--"

Graham felt for the ladder with extended hands, put
his foot on the lower rung, and, turning his head, saw

over the shoulder of the nearest man, in the yellow
flicker of the light, the first-comer astride over Howard

and still working at the door. Graham turned to
the ladder again, and was thrust by his conductor and

helped up by those above, and then he was standing
on something hard and cold and slippery outside the

ventilating funnel.
He shivered. He was aware of a great difference

in the temperature. Half a dozen men stood about
him, and light flakes of snow touched hands and face

and melted. For a moment it was dark, then for a
flash a ghastlyviolet white, and then everything was

dark again.
He saw he had come out upon the roof of the vast

city structure which had replaced the miscellaneous
houses, streets and open spaces of Victorian London.

The place upon which he stood was level, with huge
serpentine cables Iying athwart it in every direction.

The circular wheels of a number of windmills loomed
indistinct and gigantic through the darkness and snowfall,

and roared with a varying loudness as the fitful
white light smote up from below, touched the snow

eddies with a transientglitter, and made an evanescent
spectre in the night; and here and there, low down!

some vaguely outlined wind-driven mechanism flickered
with livid sparks.

All this he appreciated in a fragmentary manner as
his rescuers stood about him. Someone threw a thick

soft cloak of fur-like texture about him, and fastened
it by buckled straps at waist and shoulders. Things

were said briefly, decisively. Someone thrust him
forward.

Before his mind was yet clear a dark shape gripped
his arm. "This way," said this shape, urging him

along, and pointed Graham across the flat roof in the
direction of a dim semicircular haze of light. Graham

obeyed.
"Mind!" said a voice, as Graham stumbled against

a cable. "Between them and not across them," said
the voice. And, "We must hurry."

"Where are the people? " said Graham. "The
people you said awaited me? "

The stranger did not answer. He left Graham's
arm as the path grew narrower, and led the way with

rapid strides. Graham followed blindly. In a minute
he found himself running. "Are the others coming?"

he panted, but received no reply. His companion
glanced back and ran on. They came to a sort

of pathway of open metal-work, transverse to the direction
they had come, and they turned aside to follow

this. Graham looked back, but the snowstorm had
hidden the others.

"Come on!" said his guide. Running now, they
drew near a little windmill spinning high in the air.

"Stoop," said Graham's guide, and they avoided an
endless band running roaring up to the shaft of the

vane. "This way!" and they were ankle deep in a
gutter full of drifted thawing snow, between two low

walls of metal that presently rose waist high. "I will
go first," said the guide. Graham drew his cloak

about him and followed. Then suddenly came a narrow
abyss across which the gutter leapt to the snowy

darkness of the further side. Graham peeped over the
side once and the gulf was black. For a moment he

regretted his flight. He dared not look again, and his
brain spun as he waded through the half liquid snow.

Then out of the gutter they clambered and hurried
across a wide flat space damp with thawing snow,

and for half its extent dimly translucent to lights that
went to and fro underneath. He hesitated at this

unstable looking substance, but his guide ran on
unheeding, and so they came to and clambered up

slippery steps to the rim of a great dome of glass.
Round this they went. Far below a number of people

seemed to be dancing, and music filtered through the
dome. . . . Graham fancied he heard a shouting

through the snowstorm, and his guide hurried him on
with a new spurt of haste. They clambered panting to

a space of huge windmills, one so vast that only the
lower edge of its vans came rushing into sight and

rushed up again and was lost in the night and the
snow. They hurried for a time through the colossal

metallic tracery of its supports, and came at last above
a place of moving platforms like the place into which

Graham had looked from the balcony. They crawled
across the sloping transparency that covered this street

of platforms, crawling on hands and knees because of
the slipperiness of the snowfall.

For the most part the glass was bedewed, and Graham
saw only hazy suggestions of the forms below,

but near the pitch of the transparent roof the glass was
clear, and he found himself looking sheerly down upon

it all. For awhile, in spite of the urgency of his
guide, he gave way to vertigo and lay spread-eagled

on the glass, sick and paralysed. Far below, mere
stirring specks and dots, went the people of the unsleeping

city in their perpetualdaylight, and the moving
platforms ran on their incessant journey. Messengers