-had traced a tiny line at each corner of his mobile mouth. The
third daughter of the London clergyman--his sentiment for her--had
taught his hand the slightly episcopal gesture which was so admired at
the Lambeth Palace Garden Party in the summer of 1892. And the great
race meeting was responsible for the rather tight trousers and the
gentleman-jockey smile which he was wont to assume when he set out for a
canter in the Row. From all this it will be guessed that our Prophet was
exceedingly amenable to the influences that throng at the heels of the
human destiny. Indeed, he was. And some few months before this story
opens it came about that he encountered a gentleman who was, in fact,
the primary cause of this story being true. Who was this gentleman? you
will say. Sir Tiglath Butt, the great astronomer, Correspondent of
the Institute of France, Member of the Royal College of Science,
Demonstrator of Astronomical Physics, author of the pamphlet,
"Star-Gazers," and the brochure, "An investigation into the psychical
condition of those who see stars," C.B.F.R.S. and popular member of the
Colley Cibber Club in Long Acre.

The Prophet was introduced to Sir Tiglath at the Colley Cibber Club, and
though Sir Tiglath, who was of a freakish disposition and much addicted
to his joke declined to speak to him, on the ground that he (Sir
Tiglath) had lost his voice and was unlikely to find it in conversation,
the Prophet was greatly impressed by the astronomer's enormous brick-red
face, round body, turned legs, eyes like marbles, and capacity for
drinking port-wine--so much so, in fact that, on leaving the club, he
hastened to buy a science primer on astronomy, and devoted himself for
several days to a minute investigation of the Milky Way.

As there is a fascination of the earth, so is there a fascination of the
heavens. Along the dim, empurpled highways that lead from star to star,
from meteorite to comet, the imagination travels wakefully by night, and
the heart leaps as it draws near to the silver bosses of the moon.
Mrs. Merillia was soon obliged to permit the intrusion of a gigantic
telescope into her pretty drawing-room, and found herself expected to
converse at the dinner-table on the eight moons of Saturn, the belts of
Jupiter, the asteroids of Mars and the phases of Venus. These last
she at first declined to discuss with a man, even though he were her
grandson. But she was won over by the Prophet's innocent persuasiveness,