Astral replied, "It, too, is overshadowed. Aliens possess it."
"Where, then, are you going?" Astral faintly smiled as if in farewell, but gave no reply. He hurried aboard the vessel and was soon speeding away from the land of his birth.
When in mid-ocean, he summoned his fellow passengers about him to participate in a burial service. The caskets containing the remains of the two departed were gently lowered into the depths of the ocean and committed to the keeping of the waves.
Astral then stationed his son upon a chair in the center of the deck of the ship, and, standing by his side, with solemn mien and head uncovered, made the following deliverance in the presence of the assembled passengers, who had heard previously from his lips the story of Erma's life:
"My son," said he, "your mother has been buried in these domains, because here there abides no social group in which conditions operate toward the overshadowing of such elements as are not deemed assimilable. And now, I, Astral Herndon, hereby and forever renounce all citizenship in all lands whatsoever, and constitute myself A CITIZEN OF THE OCEAN, and ordain that this title shall be entailed upon my progeny unto all generations, until such time as the shadows which now envelope the darker races in all lands shall have passed away, away and away!"
EPILOGUE.
A LAY TO THE COMING KING.
Erma is dead, and disconsolate Astral is adrift upon the ocean.
We who have followed their fortunes, lo, these many days, are loth to leave them until our minds can fasten on some circumstance external to our being, to confirm the thought that perennially rises within and bids us believe that their lives have not been spent in vain; that "somehow good will be the final goal of ill."