e shores of Baffin's Bay, so that the sailors
coming there presently found them green and gracious, and could scarce
believe their eyes, this story does not tell. Nor of the movement of
mankind, now that the earth was hotter, northward and southward towards
the poles of the earth. It concerns itself only with the coming and the
passing of the star.

The Martian astronomers--for there are astronomers on Mars, although they
are very different beings from men--were naturally profoundly interested
by these things. They saw them from their own standpoint of course.
"Considering the mass and temperature of the missile that was flung
through our solar system into the sun," one wrote, "it is astonishing what
a little damage the earth, which it missed so narrowly, has sustained. All
the familiar continental markings and the masses of the seas remain
intact, and indeed the only difference seems to be a shrinkage of the
white discolouration (supposed to be frozen water) round either pole."
Which only shows how small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem at a
distance of a few million miles.

XXI.

THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES.

A PANTOUM IN PROSE.

It is doubtful whether the gift was innate. For my own part, I think it
came to him suddenly. Indeed, until he was thirty he was a sceptic, and
did not believe in miraculous powers. And here, since it is the most
convenient place, I must mention that he was a little man, and had eyes of
a hot brown, very erect red hair, a moustache with ends that he twisted
up, and freckles. His name was George McWhirter Fotheringay--not the sort
of name by any means to lead to any expectation of miracles--and he was
clerk at Gomshott's. He was greatly addicted to assertive argument. It was
while he was asserting the impossibility of miracles that he had his first
intimation of his extraordinary powers. This particular argument was being
held in the bar of the Long Dragon, and Toddy Beamish was conducting the
opposition by a monotonous but effective "So _you_ say," that drove
Mr. Fotheringay to the very limit of his patience.

There were present, besides these two, a very dusty cyclist, landlord Cox,
and Miss Maybridge, the perfectly respectable and rather portly barmaid of
the Dragon. Miss Maybridge was standing with her back to Mr. Fotheringay,
washing glasses; the others were watching him, more or less amused by the
present ineffectiveness of the assertive method. Goaded b