lso between others."

"It is quite possible," I said, remembering many things. "But how do you
know?"

"If I told you, Humphrey, Bickley would not believe, so I will not tell.
Perhaps I saw it in that crystal, as did the necromancers of the early
world. Or perhaps the crystal serves some different purpose and I saw it
otherwise--with my soul. At least what I say is true."

"Then who will win?" asked Bastin.

"I cannot read the future, Preacher. If I could, should I ask you to
expound to me your religion which probably is of no more worth than a
score of others I have studied, just because it tells of the future?
If I could read the future I should be a god instead of only an
earth-lord."

"Your daughter called you a god and you said that you knew we were
coming to wake you up, which is reading the future," answered Bastin.

"Every father is a god to his daughter, or should be; also in my day
millions named me a god because I saw further and struck harder than
they could. As for the rest, it came to me in a vision. Oh! Bickley, if
you were wiser than you think you are, you would know that all things
to come are born elsewhere and travel hither like the light from stars.
Sometimes they come faster before their day into a single mind, and that
is what men call prophecy. But this is a gift which cannot be commanded,
even by me. Also I did not know that you would come. I knew only that
we should awaken and by the help of men, for if none had been present at
that destined hour we must have died for lack of warmth and sustenance."

"I deny your hypothesis in toto," exclaimed Bickley, but nobody paid any
attention to him.

"My father," said Yva, rising and bowing before him with her swan-like
grace, "I have noted your commands. But do you permit that I show the
temple to these strangers, also something of our past?"

"Yes, yes," he said. "It will save much talk in a savage tongue that is
difficult to me. But bring them here no more without my command, save
Bastin only. When the sun is four hours high in the upper world, let
him come tomorrow to teach me, and afterwards if so I desire. Or if he
wills, he can sleep here."

"I think I would rather not," said Bastin hurriedly. "I make no pretense
to being particular, but this place does not appeal to me as a bedroom.
There are degrees in the pleasures of solitude and, in short, I will not
disturb your privacy at night."

Oro waved his hand and we departed down that awf