es. I was on the ground at the center of the familiar field
from which I had vanished hours before, upon the morning of that day. It
was night now, though, for that day I had spent five hundred years in
the future.

"There were many people gathered around the field, fearful, and they
screamed and some fled when I appeared in the thunderclap. I went toward
those who remained. My mind was full of things I had seen and I wanted
to tell them of these things. I wanted to tell them how they must work
ever toward that future time of wonder.

"But they did not listen. Before I had spoken minutes to them they cried
out on me as a sorcerer and a blasphemer, and seized me and brought me
here to the Inquisitor, to you, sire. And to you, sire, I have told the
truth in all things. I know that in doing so I have set the seal of my
own fate, and that only a sorcerer would ever tell such a tale, yet
despite that I am glad. Glad that I have told one at least of this time
of what I saw five centuries in the future. Glad that I saw! Glad that I
saw the things that someday, sometime, must come to be--"

* * * * *

It was a week later that they burned Henri Lothiere. Jean de Marselait,
lifting his gaze from his endless parchment accusation and examens on
that afternoon, looked out through the window at a thick curl of black
smoke going up from the distant square.

"Strange, that one," he mused. "A sorcerer, of course, but such a one as
I had never heard before. I wonder," he half-whispered, "was there any
truth in that wild tale of his? The future--who can say--what men might
do--?"

There was silence in the room as he brooded for a moment, and then he
shook himself as one ridding himself of absurd speculations. "But
tush--enough of these crazy fancies. They will have me for a sorcerer if
I yield to these wild fancies and visions _of the future_."

And bending again with his pen to the parchment before him, he went
gravely on with his work.

THE END

Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from _Amazing Stories_ February 1961, first
published in _Amazing Stories_ October 1930. Extensive research did
not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication
was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been
corrected without note.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Man Who Saw the Future, by Edmond Hamilton

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTEN