ed path"
and perhaps collide with, and certainly pass very close to, our
earth. "Earthquakes, volcanic outbreaks, cyclones, sea waves,
floods, and a steady rise in temperature to I know not what
limit"--so prophesied the master mathematician.

And overhead, to carry out his words, lonely and cold and
livid, blazed the star of the coming doom.

To many who stared at it that night until their eyes ached, it
seemed that it was visibly approaching. And that night, too, the
weather changed, and the frost that had gripped all Central Europe
and France and England softened towards a thaw.

But you must not imagine because I have spoken of people
praying through the night and people going aboard ships and people
fleeing toward mountainous country that the whole world was already
in a terror because of the star. As a matter of fact, use and wont
still ruled the world, and save for the talk of idle moments and
the splendour of the night, nine human beings out of ten were still
busy at their common occupations. In all the cities the shops,
save one here and there, opened and closed at their proper hours,
the doctor and the undertaker plied their trades, the workers
gathered in the factories, soldiers drilled, scholars studied,
lovers sought one another, thieves lurked and fled, politicians
planned their schemes. The presses of the newspapers roared
through the night, and many a priest of this church and that would
not open his holy building to further what he considered a foolish
panic. The newspapers insisted on the lesson of the year 1000--for
then, too, people had anticipated the end. The star was no
star--mere gas--a comet; and were it a star it could not possibly
strike the earth. There was no precedent for such a thing. Common
sense was sturdy everywhere, scornful, jesting, a little inclined
to persecute the obdurate fearful. That night, at seven-fifteen by
Greenwich time, the star would be at its nearest to Jupiter. Then
the world would see the turn things would take. The master
mathematician's grim warnings were treated by many as so much mere
elaborate self-advertisement. Common sense at last, a little heated
by argument, signified its unalterable convictions by going to bed.
So, too, barbarism and savagery, already tired of the novelty, went
about their nightly business, and save for a howling dog here and
there, the beast world left the star unheeded.

And yet, when at last the watchers in the Europea