gan to reconsider the details of Howard's behaviour,
sinister glances, inexplicable hesitations. Then, for a time, his mind
circled about the idea of escaping from these rooms; but whither could
he escape into this vast, crowded world? He would be worse off than
a Saxon yeoman suddenly dropped into nineteenth century London. And
besides, how could anyone escape from these rooms?

"How can it benefit anyone if harm should happen to me?"

He thought of the tumult, the great social trouble of which he was so
unaccountably the axis. A text, irrelevant enough and yet curiously
insistent, came floating up out of the darkness of his memory. This also
a Council had said:

"It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people."

CHAPTER VIII. THE ROOF SPACES

As the fans in the circular aperture of the inner room rotated and
permitted glimpses of the night, dim sounds drifted in thereby. And
Graham, standing underneath, wrestling darkly with the unknown powers
that imprisoned him, and which he had now deliberately challenged, was
startled by the sound of a voice.

He peered up and saw in the intervals of the rotation, dark and dim,
the face and shoulders of a man regarding him. When a dark hand was
extended, the swift fan struck it, swung round and beat on with a little
brownish patch on the edge of its thin blade, and something began to
fall therefrom upon the floor, dripping silently.

Graham looked down, and there were spots of blood at his feet. He looked
up again in a strange excitement. The figure had gone.

He remained motionless--his every sense intent upon the flickering patch
of darkness, for outside it was high night. He became aware of some
faint, remote, dark specks floating lightly through the outer air. They
came down towards him, fitfully, eddyingly, and passed aside out of
the uprush from the fan. A gleam of light flickered, the specks flashed
white, and then the darkness came again. Warmed and lit as he was, he
perceived that it was snowing within a few feet of him.

Graham walked across the room and came back to the ventilator again. He
saw the head of a man pass near. There was a sound of whispering. Then
a smart blow on some metallic substance, effort, voices, and the vans
stopped. A gust of snowflakes whirled into the room, and vanished before
they touched the floor. "Don't be afraid," said a voice.

Graham stood under the fan. "Who are you?" he whispered.

For a moment there was no