On the fourth day the first train from the provinces to London was run; and several ships, which the weed had overgrown without injuring, came into port. After this, traffic was rapidly re-established.
A fortnight later our present government was provisionally established. The professor, whom all hailed as their deliverer, refused office himself; but upon his nomination I was appointed to my present position. Several of our little band were assigned important posts, including Steel—now known by another name, and married to Lady Evelyn—and Viva, who is presiding over the London Homes for Orphans, until our marriage. The day after tomorrow a newspaper appears.
We have toiled unremittingly to reconstruct the social and commercial life of the country, and not without success. We have few luxuries, but no wants; fewer workers, but no drones; fewer to love—but we love more—I think the world will go well, now, because we love one another so much.
“The Gray Weed has solved the problems of poverty, envy, crime and strife, which have puzzled mankind for ages,” the professor said, just before he died. “Don’t cry, little Viva. Ah! But I felt a tear on my hand! There is nothing to cry about, my child. They have gone; and I am going; but you have learned to love. It is all for the best!”
“All—for—the—best,” he repeated at the last, and smiled. That is his message to you to whom I write, dear friends.
With Caste Against Him
BY HUGH PENDEXTER
TIBERIUS Smith in love was a spectacle I had never conjured up. Billy Campbell, the strolling actor and his patron’s Boswell, had pictured the old showman to me as being arrested for a spy in Russia, for a madman in France, for a too active Carlist in Spain and for smuggling opium in China, but he had never hinted at sentiment. I had taken it for granted that Smith’s many wanderings over the face of the earth with his various theatrical enterprises and circuses had eliminated any inclination for love-sickness, and it seems it had until he met the lord’s daughter.