fixed on me. He looked into the air, and talked to
whatever it was he saw. He pointed a finger at the light of the city
lying beyond and below our carriage window. "All they've built," he said,
"stands only on a few odd notions. Now they're changing their notions, so
down comes everything with a run. And don't they look surprised and
pained!" (I felt like an eavesdropper, and thought I'd better show him I
was present.) I apologized for overhearing him. He nodded shortly, a
little condescendingly. "We've accepted _that_"--he poked his stick
towards where stood our Imperial city in the night--"as if it came by
itself. We never knew our city was like that just because we never saw it
in any other light. Now we're upset to find the magic-lantern picture is
fading. Got to put up with it, though." His book had been on the seat.
It fell to the floor, and I picked it up and handed it to him. It was
_The Twilight of the Gods_.

If I could have remembered at that moment one of the simple dodges for
averting the evil eye I should have used it. The laughing malice of that
book had so confused me for some days that I had begun to feel that even
St. Paul's, a blue bubble floating over London on the stream of Time,
might vanish, as bubbles will. The Hidden Hand, I began to believe, had
something in it.

I intrigued a serious interview with my fellow-passenger, hoping to find
evidence; and then the train stopped finally, six miles from home. At
that very instant of time the train which we had previously rejected
because it had no engine chose to run express through the station where
we stood.

XX. Figure-Heads

MARCH 1, 1919. When the car got to the Board of Trade Office, which is
opposite the old chapel of ease where the crews of John Company's ships
"used to worship," as a local history tells us, I saw Uncle Dave by the
kerb, with time apparently on his hands. I got down.

He told me old Jackson is dead. Jackson was a mast and block maker, but
his fame was the excellence of his figure-heads. It is many years since
old Jackson made one, but if it is doubted that he was an artist, there
is a shop near where he once lived which still displays three of his
images, the size of life, reputed to have been conjured from baulks of
timber with an ax. I remember Jackson. He rarely answered you when you
questioned him about those ships to which he had given personality and
eyes that looked sleeplessly overseas from their prows. He