alled Earth."

"True," he nodded, "that is the name He gave to it: Earth. He was a
young man, but He was full of kindness and wisdom. He took my people
out of the fields and the forests, and He taught them the working of
metals, and the making of such things as He thought were good. Other
things, of which He knew, He kept secret. He had small instruments He
could hold in His hand, and which roared suddenly, that would take the
life of large animals at a great distance, but He did not explain
these, saying that they were bad. But all the good things He made for
my people, and showed them how to make others.

* * * * *

"Not all my people were good. Some of them hated this great one, and
strove against Him. They were makers of trouble, and He sent them to
the southern continent, which is called Neen. Those among my people who
loved Him and served Him best, He made His friends. He taught them His
language, which is this that I speak, and which has been the holy
language of His priests since that day. He gave to these friends names
from his own country, and they were handed down from father to son, so
that I am now Artur, as my father was Artur, and his father before him,
for many generations."

"Just a second," I put in. "Artur? That is not--ah! Arthur! That is the
name: Arthur."

"Perhaps so," nodded the priest of this unknown Earth-child. "In many
generations, a name might slightly change. But I must hasten on with my
story, for outside my people become impatient.

"In the course of time, He passed away, an old man, with a beard that
was whiter than the hair of our new-born children. Here, our hair grows
dark with age, but His whitened like the metal of his ship that brought
Him here. But He left to us His voice, and so long as His voice spoke
to us on the anniversary of the day upon which He came out of the sky,
the Neens believed that His power still protected His people.

"But the Neens were only awaiting the time when His voice would no
longer sound in the Place. Each year their brown and savage
representatives came, upon the anniversary, to listen, and each time
they cowered and went back to their own kind with the word that He Who
Speaks, still spoke to His people.

"But the last anniversary, no sound came forth. His voice was silenced
at last; and the Neens went back rejoicing, to tell their people that
at last the god of the Libars had truly died, and that His voi