Itinerant venders moved about among the throngs bawling their chief ware—"Programs for the Temple, to-morrow." George Bullen bought one of the Programs.
It was an amazing production, and as blasphemous as it was amazing. It was most sumptuously got up, printed in a style unknown to the days of even the end of the first decade of the 20th century.
But before he began to read the order of the events, or even to note the marks of sumptuousness of the appearance of the program, his attention was arrested by a bold, curious hieroglyphic which headed the program. This figuring was in richest purple and gold, and bore this form:
[Illustration: Mark of the Beast]
For a long time he puzzled over the sign. Then, suddenly a memory returned to him. One night when Ralph Bastin had been speaking to him about the Anti-Christ he had said:
"Here is a curious thing, George! I have just read in the Revelation, thirteen, eighteen, that The Number of the Beast—the Anti-christ—is THE Number of MAN; and his number is 666." Now this number, in the Greek, is made up of two characters which stand for the name of Christ, with a third character, the figure of a crooked serpent put between them—the name of God's Christ, the Messiah, turned into a devil sacrament (i. e. oath of fidelity.)
"Ralph would have shown me the sign, I know," Bullen mused, "but that at the very moment we were talking together, there came that scare of fire in the stereo room, and we both rushed away. But now I know that this sign on the program is the 'Mark of the Beast,' and that it signifies the oath of Fidelity to Anti-christ."
He caught his breath sharply, as he murmured: