w day where he found Fidu digging up a freshly
planted lawn in search of a bone he had buried on a golf course
countless eons before.

"Come, come," said Gud, "let the dead bones stay buried--the future of
eternal life is long enough without digging up the past."

Having dissuaded Fidu from his search for provender Gud offered him a
portion of his own lunch.

"Do you remember," remarked Gud to the Underdog, as they sat munching
their sandwiches, "the time I was on that little world back there--"

"Which one?" asked Fidu.

"The one I am talking about, silly--I ran into an earthquake. It shook
things up rather badly and toppled over about half the houses, killing
and maiming millions of mortals."

"What caused it?"

"I don't know, probably it was accidental--but that isn't important.
What interested me was what those poor mortals thought caused it. As I
was strolling through a town watching the relief committee at work, I
happened to see people going into a steep roofed building, which being
well constructed, had not fallen down. I joined the crowd and went in.
One of their kind was standing on a box at the far end of the building
and talking. I sat down with the others and listened to him.

"He was talking about the 'divine visitation.' For a moment I became
self-conscious, thinking my incognito had been discovered. But I soon
realized that he referred to the earthquake.

"His theory was interesting. He thought their silly little world had
been shaken up by their divinity. I knew that he was mistaken, for I
knew the chap who had that world in charge; he is a weak little god who
could not shake up a good-sized island."

"For what reason did the mortals think your friend shook them up?" asked
Fidu.

"The one who was talking had two theories about it. You see they had two
kinds of folks in that world--one bunch was called 'sinners' and one was
called 'righteous.' Plenty of both bunches were killed by the quake. But
it seemed that the fellow who was talking, wanted the sinners killed and
he was praising my friend for doing it. But his difficulty was in
explaining the death of the righteous, whom I gathered were friends of
his that had been in the habit of paying him to talk to them. There were
a good many empty stalls in the room with black cloths on them, and some
of the women in the crowd were weeping.

"Well, after the talker got through explaining that their deity had
caused the earthquake for the purpose