n know when they're going to cremate him."

"He will be the first, Mr President; and no doubt he will be looked
closely after. Old Barnes will be here by that time, won't he, sir?"

"Barnes is the second, and he will come just three months before
Crasweller's departure. But Tallowax, the grocer in High Street, will
be up here by that time. And then they will come so quickly, that
we must soon see to get other lodgings finished. Exors, the lawyer,
will be the fourth; but he will not come in till a day or two after
Crasweller's departure."

"They all will come; won't they, sir?" asked Graybody.

"Will come! Why, they must. It is the law."

"Tallowax swears he'll have himself strapped to his own kitchen
table, and defend himself to the last gasp with a carving-knife.
Exors says that the law is bad, and you can't touch him. As for
Barnes, he has gone out of what little wits he ever had with the
fright of it, and people seem to think that you couldn't touch a
lunatic."

"Barnes is no more a lunatic than I am."

"I only tell you what folk tell me. I suppose you'll try it on by
force, if necessary. You never expected that people would come and
deposit themselves of their own accord."

"The National Assembly expects that the citizens of Britannula will
obey the law."

"But there was one question I was going to ask, Mr President. Of
course I am altogether on your side, and do not wish to raise
difficulties. But what shall I do suppose they take to running away
after they have been deposited? If old Crasweller goes off in his
steam-carriage, how am I to go after him, and whom am I to ask to
help to bring him back again?"

I was puzzled, but I did not care to show it. No doubt a hundred
little arrangements would be necessary before the affairs of the
institution could be got into a groove so as to run steadily. But our
first object must be to deposit Crasweller and Barnes and Tallowax,
so that the citizens should be accustomed to the fashion of
depositing the aged. There were, as I knew, two or three old women
living in various parts of the island, who would, in due course, come
in towards the end of Crasweller's year. But it had been rumoured
that they had already begun to invent falsehoods as to their age,
and I was aware that we might be led astray by them. This I had been
prepared to accept as being unavoidable; but now, as the time grew
nearer, I could not but see how difficult it would be to enforce the
law aga