me, Sire," panted the newcomer, and Graham glancing at
his face again, saw a new cut had changed from white to red on his
forehead, and a couple of little trickles of blood starting therefrom.
"Your people call for you."

"Come where? My people?"

"To the hall about the markets. Your life is in danger here. We have
spies. We learned but just in time. The Council has decided--this very
day--either to drug or kill you. And everything is ready. The people are
drilled, the Wind-Vane police, the engineers, and half the way-gearers
are with us. We have the halls crowded--shouting. The whole city shouts
against the Council. We have arms." He wiped the blood with his hand.
"Your life here is not worth--"

"But why arms?"

"The people have risen to protect you, Sire. What?"

He turned quickly as the man who had first come down made a hissing with
his teeth. Graham saw the latter start back, gesticulate to them to
conceal themselves, and move as if to hide behind the opening door.

As he did so Howard appeared, a little tray in one hand and his heavy
face downcast. He started, looked up, the door slammed behind him, the
tray tilted side-ways, and the steel wedge struck him behind the ear. He
went down like a felled tree, and lay as he fell athwart the floor of the
outer room. The man who had struck him bent hastily, studied his face for
a moment, rose, and returned to his work at the door.

"Your poison!" said a voice in Graham's ear.

Then abruptly they were in darkness. The innumerable cornice lights had
been extinguished. Graham saw the aperture of the ventilator with ghostly
snow whirling above it and dark figures moving hastily. Three knelt on
the vane. Some dim thing--a ladder--was being lowered through the
opening, and a hand appeared holding a fitful yellow light.

He had a moment of hesitation. But the manner of these men, their swift
alacrity, their words, marched so completely with his own fears of the
Council, with his idea and hope of a rescue, that it lasted not a moment.
And his people awaited him!

"I do not understand," he said. "I trust. Tell me what to do."

The man with the cut brow gripped Graham's arm. "Clamber up the ladder,"
he whispered. "Quick. They will have heard--"

Graham felt for the ladder with extended hands, put his foot on the
lower rung, and, turning his head, saw over the shoulder of the nearest
man, in the yellow flicker of the light, the first-comer astride over
Howard and stil