below was hurry, excitement, conflicting orders,
pauses, spasmodic developments of organisation, a

vast ascending clamour and confusion. Before the
Council came out, toiling perspiring men, directed by

a conflict of shouts, carried forth hundreds of those
who had perished in the hand-to-hand conflict within

those long passages and chambers.
Guards in black lined the way that the Council

would come, and as far as the eye could reach into the
hazy blue twilight of the ruins, and swarming now at

every possible point in the captured Council House
and along the shattered cliff of its circumadjacent

buildings, were innumerable people, and their voices
even when they were not cheering, were as the soughing

of the sea upon a pebble beach. Ostrog had
chosen a huge commanding pile of crushed and over-

thrown masonry, and on this a stage of timbers and
metal girders was being hastily constructed. Its

essential parts were complete, but humming and
clangorous machinery still glared fitfully in the

shadows 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 his memory two hundred years gone by--and this

as well?
CHAPTER XIV

FROM THE CROW S NEST
And so after strange delays and through an avenue

of doubt and battle, this man from the nineteenth
century came at last to his position at the head of that

complex world.
At first when he rose from the long deep sleep that

followed his rescue and the surrender of the Council,
he did not recognise his surroundings. By an effort

he gained a clue in his mind, and all that had
happened came back to him, at first with a quality of

insincerity like a story heard, like something read out
of a book. And even before his memories were clear,

the exultation of his escape, the wonder of his
prominence were back in his mind. He was owner of half

the world; Master of the Earth. This new great age
was in the completest sense his. He no longer hoped

to discover his experiences a dream; he became
anxious now to convince himself that they were real.

An obsequious valet assisted him to dress under the
direction of a dignified chief attendant, a little man

whose face proclaimed him Japanese, albeit he spoke
English like an Englishman. From the latter he

learnt something of the state of affairs. Already the
revolution was an accepted fact; already business was

being resumed throughout the city. Abroad the
downfall of the Council had been received for the most

part with delight. Nowhere was the Council popular,
and the thousand cities of Western America, after two

hundred years still jealous of New York, London, and
the East, had risen almost unanimously two days

before at the news of Graham's imprisonment. Paris
was fighting within itself. The rest of the world hung

in suspense.
While he was breaking his fast, the sound of a

telephone bell jetted from a corner, and his chief
attendant called his attention to the voice of Ostrog making

polite enquiries. Graham interrupted his refreshment
to reply. Very shortly Lincoln arrived, and Graham

at once expressed a strong desire to talk to people and
to be shown more of the new life that was opening

before him. Lincoln informed him that in three hours'
time a representative gathering of officials and their

wives would be held in the state apartments of the
wind-vane Chief. Graham's desire to traverse the

ways of the city was, however, at present impossible,
because of the enormousexcitement of the people.

It was, however, quite possible for him to take a bird's
eye view of the city from the crow'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