Today's Stichomancy for Charlton Heston

the bed to feel for the chair where he put his watch and chain overnight. No chair was there--of course, he'd forgotten, there wasn't a chair in this wretched spare room. Had to put the confounded thing under his pillow. "Half-past eight, Sunday, breakfast at nine--time for the bath"--his brain ticked to the watch. He sprang out of bed and went over to the window. The venetian blind was broken, hung fan-shaped over the upper pane..."That blind must be mended. I'll get the office boy to drop in and fix it on his way home to-morrow--he's a good hand at blinds. Give him twopence and he'll do it as well as a carpenter...Anna could do it herself if she was all right. So would I, for the matter of that, but I don't like to trust myself on rickety step-ladders." He looked up at the sky: it shone,

tells me, Peter of Blentz is to have himself crowned as king in the cathedral at Lustadt.

"Will you sit supinely by and see another rob you of your kingdom, and then continue to rob and throttle your sub- jects as he has been doing for the past ten years? No, you will not. Even if you do not want the crown, you were born to the duties and obligations it entails, and for the sake of your people you must assume them now."

"How am I to know that you are not another of the creatures of that fiend of Blentz?" cried the king. "How am I to know that you will not drag me back to the terrors of

The Mad King

eventually all would be satisfactorily explained.

And now two great fleets were moving upon Helium, while the Dusarian spies at the court of Tardos Mors saw to it that the twin cities remained in ignorance of their danger.

War had been declared by Thuvan Dihn, but the messenger who had been dispatched with the proclamation had been a Dusarian who had seen to it that no word of warning reached the twin cities of the approach of a hostile fleet.

For several days diplomatic relations had been severed between Helium and her two most powerful neighbors, and with the departure of the ministers had come a

Thuvia, Maid of Mars

was a miniature man. We could see distinctly his every movement, as he approached cautiously the stream's edge, dropped his short line at the end of a stick over the bank, and then yanked bodily the fish from beneath. Behind him stood his pony. We could make out in the clear air the coil of his raw- hide "rope," the glitter of his silver bit, the metal points on his saddle skirts, the polish of his six- shooter, the gleam of his fish, all the details of his costume. Yet he was fully a mile distant. After a time he picked up his string of fish, mounted, and