ks." Loudons
gnawed the end of his cigar and frowned. "Monty, this has me worried
like the devil, because I believe that they suspect that you are the
Slain and Risen One."

"Could be, at that. I know the Tenant came up to me, very
respectfully, and said, 'I hope you don't think, sir, that I was
presumptuous in trying to display my humble deductive abilities to
_you_.'"

"What did you say?" Loudons demanded rather sharply.

"Told him certainly not; that he'd used a good quick method of
demonstrating that he and his people weren't like those mindless
subhumans in the woods."

"That was all right. I don't know how we're going to handle this. They
only suspect that you are their deity. As it stands, now, we're on
trial, here. And I get the impression that logic, not faith, seems to
be their supreme religious virtue; that skepticism is a religious
obligation instead of a sin. That's something else that's practically
unheard of. I wish I knew--"

* * * * *

Tenant Mycroft Jones, and Reader Stamford Rawson and Toon Sarge Verner
Hughes, and his son Murray Hughes, sat around the bare-topped table in
the room, on the second floor of the Aitch-Cue House. A lighted candle
flickered in the cool breeze that came in through the open window
throwing their shadows back and forth on the walls.

"Pass the tantalus, Murray," the Tenant said, and the youngest of the
four handed the corncob-corked bottle to the eldest. Tenant Jones
filled his cup, and then sat staring at it, while Verner Hughes thrust
his pipe into the toe of the moccasin and filled it. Finally, he drank
about half of the clear wild-plum brandy.

"Gentlemen, I am baffled," he confessed. "We have three alternate
possibilities here, and we dare not disregard any of them. Either
this man who calls himself Altamont is truly He, or he is merely what
we are asked to believe, one of a community like ours, with more of
the old knowledge than we possess."

"You know my views," Verner Hughes said. "I cannot believe that He was
more than a man, as we are. A great, a good, a wise man, but a man and
mortal."

"Let's not go into that, now." The Reader emptied his cup and took the
bottle, filling it again. "You know my views, too. I hold that He is
no longer upon earth in the flesh, but lives in the spirit and is only
with us in the spirit. There are three possibilities, too, none of
which can be eliminated. But what was your third possibility,