"There shall be no more wars!--there CAN be none!"

Roger Seaton said these words aloud with defiant emphasis, addressing the dumb sky. It was early morning, but an intense heat had so scorched the earth that not the smallest drop of dew glittered on any leaf or blade of grass; it was all arid, brown and burned into a dryness as of fever. But Seaton was far too much engrossed with himself and his own business to note the landscape, or to be troubled by the suffocating closeness of the atmosphere,--he stood gazing with the idolatry of a passionate lover at a small, plain metal case, containing a dozen or more small plain metal cylinders, as small as women's thimbles, all neatly ranged side by side, divided from contact with one another by folded strips of cotton.

"There it is!" he went on, apostrophising the still air--"Complete,--perfected! If I sold that to any nation under the sun, that nation could rule the world!--could wipe out everything save itself and its own people! I have wrested the secret from the very womb of Nature!--it is mine--all mine! I would have given it to Britain--or to the United States--but neither will accept my terms--so therefore I hold it--I, only!--which is just as well! I--just I--am master of destiny!--the Power we call God, has put this tiling into my hands! What a marvel and shall I not use it? I will! Let Germany but stir an inch towards aggression, and Germany shall exist no longer!--The same with any other nation that starts a quarrel--I--I alone will settle it!"