ghastly extinct monster, pouring
out human screams, and beginning almost instantly to crawl with broken
life.

Mabel scarcely knew what happened next; but she found herself a moment
later forced forward by some violent pressure from behind, till she
stood shaking from head to foot, with some kind of smashed body of a man
moaning and stretching at her feet. There was a sort of articulate
language coming from it; she caught distinctly the names of Jesus and
Mary; then a voice hissed suddenly in her ears:

"Let me through. I am a priest."

She stood there a moment longer, dazed by the suddenness of the whole
affair, and watched almost unintelligently the grey-haired young priest
on his knees, with his coat torn open, and a crucifix out; she saw him
bend close, wave his hand in a swift sign, and heard a murmur of a
language she did not know. Then he was up again, holding the crucifix
before him, and she saw him begin to move forward into the midst of the
red-flooded pavement, looking this way and that as if for a signal. Down
the steps of the great hospital on her right came figures running now,
hatless, each carrying what looked like an old-fashioned camera. She
knew what those men were, and her heart leaped in relief. They were the
ministers of euthanasia. Then she felt herself taken by the shoulder and
pulled back, and immediately found herself in the front rank of a crowd
that was swaying and crying out, and behind a line of police and
civilians who had formed themselves into a cordon to keep the pressure
back.

III

Oliver was in a panic of terror as his mother, half an hour later, ran
in with the news that one of the Government volors had fallen in the
station square at Brighton just after the 14-1/2 train had discharged
its passengers. He knew quite well what that meant, for be remembered
one such accident ten years before, just after the law forbidding
private volors had been passed. It meant that every living creature in
it was killed and probably many more in the place where it fell--and
what then? The message was clear enough; she would certainly be in the
square at that time.

He sent a desperate wire to her aunt asking for news; and sat, shaking
in his chair, awaiting the answer. His mother sat by him.

"Please God---" she sobbed out once, and stopped confounded as he turned
on her.

But Fate was merciful, and three minutes before Mr. Phillips toiled up
the path with the answer, Mabel herself came