've
got to say is done, let me lose my miraculous power, let my will become
just like anybody else's will, and all these dangerous miracles be
stopped. I don't like them. I'd rather I didn't work 'em. Ever so much.
That's the first thing. And the second is--let me be back just before the
miracles begin; let everything be just as it was before that blessed lamp
turned up. It's a big job, but it's the last. Have you got it? No more
miracles, everything as it was--me back in the Long Dragon just before I
drank my half-pint. That's it! Yes."

He dug his fingers into the mould, closed his eyes, and said "Off!"

Everything became perfectly still. He perceived that he was standing
erect.

"So _you_ say," said a voice.

He opened his eyes. He was in the bar of the Long Dragon, arguing about
miracles with Toddy Beamish. He had a vague sense of some great thing
forgotten that instantaneously passed. You see that, except for the loss
of his miraculous powers, everything was back as it had been, his mind and
memory therefore were now just as they had been at the time when this
story began. So that he knew absolutely nothing of all that is told here--
knows nothing of all that is told here to this day. And among other
things, of course, he still did not believe in miracles.

"I tell you that miracles, properly speaking, can't possibly happen," he
said, "whatever you like to hold. And I'm prepared to prove it up to the
hilt."

"That's what _you_ think," said Toddy Beamish, and "Prove it if you
can."

"Looky here, Mr. Beamish," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Let us clearly
understand what a miracle is. It's something contrariwise to the course of
nature done by power of Will..."

XXII.

A VISION OF JUDGMENT.

I.

Bru-a-a-a.

I listened, not understanding.

Wa-ra-ra-ra.

"Good Lord!" said I, still only half awake. "What an infernal shindy!"

Ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra Ta-ra-rra-ra.

"It's enough," said I, "to wake----" and stopped short. Where was I?

Ta-rra-rara--louder and louder.

"It's either some new invention----"

Toora-toora-toora! Deafening!

"No," said I, speaking loud in order to hear myself. "That's the Last
Trump."

Tooo-rraa!

II.

The last note jerked me out of my grave like a hooked minnow.

I saw my monument (rather a mean little affair, and I wished I knew who'd
done it), and the old elm tree and the sea view vanished like a puff of
steam, and then all about me--a multitude no