were, and great oaks from little acorns grow, it's the little
things that count, and he dare not go a-hunting for fear of little
men.

Jesse crouched against the dock, watching the grain-elevators burn.
The whole city was burning, Babylon the mighty, the whole world was
burning in God's final wrath of judgment.

Nobody believed in God any more, nobody read the Bible, and that's why
they didn't know these things. Jesse knew, because he was an old man
and he remembered how it had been when he was a little boy. A little
boy who learned of the Word of God and the Wrath of God.

He could see the reflection of the flames in the water, now, and the
reflection was shimmery and broken because of the black clusters
floating past. Large clusters and small clusters. There were bodies in
the water, the bodies of the slain.

Thunder boomed from the city behind him. Explosions. That's how it had
started, when the Naturalists began blowing up the buildings. And then
the Yardsticks had come with their weapons, hunting down the
Naturalists. Or had it been that way, really? It didn't matter, now.
That was in another country and besides, the wench was dead.

The wench _is_ dead. His wench, Jesse's wench. She wasn't so old. Only
seventy-two. But they killed her, they blew off the top of her head
and he could feel it when they did. It was as if something had
happened in _his_ head, and then he ran at them and screamed, and
there was great slaughter amongst the heathen, the forces of
unrighteousness.

And Jesse had fled, and smote evil in the name of the Lord, for he
perceived now that the time was at hand.

_How the mighty are fallen._

Jesse blinked at the water, wishing it would clear, wishing his
thoughts would clear. Sometimes for a moment he could remember back to
the way things _really_ were. When it was still a real world, with
real people in it. When he was just a little boy and everybody else
was big.

Strange. Now he was an old man, a big old man, and almost everybody
else was little.

He tried to think what it had been like, so long ago. It was too long.
All he could remember about being small was that he had been afraid.
Afraid of the bigger people.

And now he was big, and afraid of the smaller people.

Of course they weren't real. It was just part of the prophecy, they
were the locusts sent to consume and destroy. He kept telling himself
there was nothing to fear; the righteous need not fear when the day of
jud