crouched, soaked to the skin from the thunderstorm the night of the
catastrophe. Our muddy footsteps I saw still went up the stairs.

I followed them to my study, and found lying on my writing-table
still, with the selenite paper weight upon it, the sheet of work I had
left on the afternoon of the opening of the cylinder. For a space I
stood reading over my abandoned arguments. It was a paper on the
probable development of Moral Ideas with the development of the
civilising process; and the last sentence was the opening of a
prophecy: "In about two hundred years," I had written, "we may
expect----" The sentence ended abruptly. I remembered my inability
to fix my mind that morning, scarcely a month gone by, and how I had
broken off to get my _Daily Chronicle_ from the newsboy. I remembered
how I went down to the garden gate as he came along, and how I had
listened to his odd story of "Men from Mars."

I came down and went into the dining room. There were the mutton
and the bread, both far gone now in decay, and a beer bottle
overturned, just as I and the artilleryman had left them. My home was
desolate. I perceived the folly of the faint hope I had cherished so
long. And then a strange thing occurred. "It is no use," said a
voice. "The house is deserted. No one has been here these ten days.
Do not stay here to torment yourself. No one escaped but you."

I was startled. Had I spoken my thought aloud? I turned, and the
French window was open behind me. I made a step to it, and stood
looking out.

And there, amazed and afraid, even as I stood amazed and afraid,
were my cousin and my wife--my wife white and tearless. She gave a
faint cry.

"I came," she said. "I knew--knew----"

She put her hand to her throat--swayed. I made a step forward, and
caught her in my arms.



CHAPTER TEN

THE EPILOGUE


I cannot but regret, now that I am concluding my story, how little
I am able to contribute to the discussion of the many debatable
questions which are still unsettled. In one respect I shall certainly
provoke criticism. My particular province is speculative philosophy.
My knowledge of comparative physiology is confined to a book or two,
but it seems to me that Carver's suggestions as to the reason of the
rapid death of the Martians is so probable as to be regarded almost as
a proven conclusion. I have assumed that in the body of my narrative.

At any rate, in all the bodies of the Martians that were examined
after the war, no bacteria except those already known as terrestrial
species were found. That they did not bury any of their dead, and the
reckless slaughter they perpetrated, point also to an entire ignorance
of the putrefactive process. But probable as this seems, it is by no
means a proven conclusion.

Neither is the composition of the Black Smoke known, which the
Martians used with such deadly effect, and the generator of the
Heat-Rays remains a puzzle. The terrible disasters at the Ealing
and South Kensington laboratories have disinclined analysts for further
investigations upon the latter. Spectrum analysis of the black powder
points unmistakably to the presence of an unknown element with a
brilliant group of three lines in the green, and it is possible that
it combines with argon to form a compound which acts at once with
deadly effect upon some constituent in the blood. But such unproven
speculations will scarcely be of interest to the general reader, to
whom this story is addressed. None of the brown scum that drifted
down the Thames after the destruction of Shepperton was examined at
the time, and now none is forthcoming.

The results of an anatomical examination of the Martians, so far
as the prowling dogs had left such an examination possible, I have
already given. But everyone is familiar with the magnificent and
almost complete specimen in spirits at the Natural History Museum, and
the countless drawings that have been made from it; and beyond that
the interest of their physiology and structure is purely scientific.

A question of graver and universal interest is the possibility of
another attack from the Martians. I do not think that nearly enough
attention is being given to this aspect of the matter. At present the
planet Mars is in conjunction, but with every return to opposition I,
for one, anticipate a renewal of their adventure. In any case, we
should be prepared. It seems to me that it should be possible to
define the position of the gun from which the shots are discharged, to
keep a sustained watch upon this part of the planet, and to anticipate
the arrival of the next attack.

In that case the cylinder might be destroyed with dynamite or
artillery before it was sufficiently cool for the Martians to emerge,
or they might be butchered by means of guns so soon as the screw
opened. It seems to me that they have lost a vast advantage in the
failure of their first surprise. Possibly they see it in the same
light.

Lessing has advanced excellent reasons for supposing that the
Martians have actually succeeded in effecting a landing on the planet


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