"And I do now deliver into his keeping the Etheric Fleet, charging him never to shed human blood, except at the command of the Great Council of Nations to vindicate the Divine Justice upon any people who shall lift rebellious hands against mankind."
For twenty years this first of the Viceroys of the Air remained in custody of the sheathed sword, a lonely man, and a silent, greatly loved, and greatly suffering.
His wounds, which in one of lesser strength must have proved mortal, bred in his shattered body malignant growths, of which, aged and weary, he died in his forty-fifth year. To Branscombe he passed on the Trust of the Sword; and it was in the bed from which he never afterwards rose that he wrote his book, "The Chariot of the Sun," telling the story of his hopeless and unspoken love for the woman he had so valiantly served.
After his death, in the year 2005, the manuscript was found under seal, addressed to her Majesty, and has not been published until the passions of that time were stilled, and the Terror remains only as a memory seen through the mists of sixty-five fruitful years.
Last winter, our august and venerable sovereign caused the work to be read aloud to her children and grandchildren, and it is on the plea of the young princes that the story is now given to publication. To the people of the golden age it will seem a very quaint, funny old document, which is concerned with such obsolete virtues as unselfish love, faith, honour, and manliness.
HYLTON,
Viceroy of the Air.
THE END
PRINTED BY
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLES.