in a theatre--_it was all very theatrical_!

A score of trumpeters executed a wonderful fanfare, then, amid more
pomp than the world had ever yet seen, a crown, of fabulous value and
of extraordinary magnificence, was set upon the head of Apleon, who
occupied the throne, each of the ten kings actually touching, and
helping to set the crown upon his head.

Hitherto, Apleon, though upheld by the ten kings and governments, had,
after all, been an un-crowned Dictator. Now, in the hour of his
seeming triumph over "The Two Witnesses," he was crowned Roman Emperor
of the ten-kingdomed confederacy.

When the coronation ceremony was finally completed, and Apleon, mounted
on his black horse, and surrounded by the ten kings, started to ride
back to the Palace, he ordered messages to be flashed to all the cities
of the world, announcing three days of rejoicing over the slaying of
the Witnesses, and also the announcement of his own coronation.

The rejoicings in Jerusalem, Babylon, and elsewhere, over the death of
"The Witnesses" was wilder than the "Mafficking" [Transcriber's note:
Mafeking?] in England of the Boer war days. The two Witnesses had been
a source of torment and fear upon all peoples (save those who clove to
God) and now that their headless bodies lay stark and dead on the
marble pave of "The Broadway," the people "_rejoiced upon them, made
merry, and sent gifts one to another_." Rev. xi. 10.

The outrage upon decency, sanitation, and even common humanity, in
suffering the two bodies to remain unburied, lasted three days and a
half. Three days and a half was long enough period for the
representatives of every nation, gathered in the city and
neighbourhood, to be perfectly assured that they were dead. "_And
certain ones from among the peoples and the tribes and tongues and
nations behold their corpses three days and a half, and suffer not
their corpses to be put in sepulchre_." Rev. xi. 9.

When Edward the 7th of Britain, lay dead in the great Abbey of the
Empire, it was counted high honour to be part of the _silent_ guard
over the coffin.

And men almost fought for the privilege to stand guard over the
headless forms of the Two Witnesses lying on that marble pave in
Jerusalem: "_It cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem_."
Luke xiii. 33.

But _these_ death-guards were not silent. They laugh scornfully,
derisively, and crack jokes upon the now silenced testimony of the Two
Witnesses. Caricat