ure, Charley. The careless, and godless have
already said some very foolish things relative to the stupendous event
that has just taken place, and I think, for a few days, they are likely
to say even more foolish things. What is the special one that you have
heard?"

"Why they sez, sir--its in one o' the _h_eving peepers, they sez--that
the people wot's missin' hev been carted off in aeroplanes by some o'
the other religionists wot wanted to git rid o' them, an' that the
crank religiouses is all gone to----"

"Where?" smiled Bastin.

"I don't think anybody knows where, sir!"

"I do, Charley, and many others to-day, who have been left behind from
that great Translation know--they have been 'caught up' into the air
where Jesus Christ had come from Heaven to summon them to Himself.

"Mr. Hammond is there, Charley, and that sweet little adopted daughter
of mine, whom you once asked me whether 'angels could be more beautiful
than she was!'"

"Ah, yus, sir, I recollecks, sir, she wur too bootiful fur words, she
wur."

There was one moment's pause, then the boy, with a hurried, "it's all
dreadful confuzellin," slipped from the room.

Ralph Bastin opened paper after paper, glanced with the swift,
comprehensive eye of the practised journalist at here and there a
column or paragraph, and was on the point of tossing the last
news-sheet down with the others, on the floor, when his eye caught the
words, "Joyce, Journalist."

The paragraph recorded the finding of the body of the drunken
scoundrel. "From the position of the body," the account read, "and
from the nature of the wounds, it would almost seem as though some
infernal power had hurled him, head on, against the wall of the room.
Whether we believe, or disbelieve the statements concerning the taking
away, by some mysterious Translation process, of a number of persons
from our midst, yet the fact remains that each hour is marked by the
finding of some poor dead creature, under circumstances quite as
tragically mysterious as this case of Joyce the reporter."

For a time Ralph Bastin sat deep in thought. He had not yet written
the article for to-morrow's issue "From the Prophet's chair." He felt
his insufficiency, he realized the need of being God's true witness in
this hour that was ushering in the awful reign of The Antichrist. He
did the _best_ thing, he knelt in prayer, crying:

"O God, I am so ignorant, teach me, give me Thy wisdom in this
momentous hour