I was dog-tired and went off into slumber the moment I closed my eyes. About the last thing I heard was the peevish voice of Meigs resisting what little comfort the professor tried to offer him. I was aroused by the professor. "The first gleam of day, Mr. Munn," said he, bending over me with a quiet smile. I rubbed my eyes and got the cobwebs out of my brain. Yes, it was the first gleam of day—our last day. We were in an open square in the heart of a diminutive city. From every side radiated trim little streets bordered thickly with white dwellings. In front of us was a palace, rising dome upon dome until it stood full thirty feet high. Inhabitants of the royal city were already abroad, walking rapidly or gathering in groups and using their word-boxes excitedly. "Toot! toot! Ting-a-ling-a-ling!" The familiar sounds came from a distance, and I sprang erect and with the professor gazed in the direction from which they reached us. Presently Gilhooly came along with a loaded train. He halted in front of the palace, the passengers disembarked and Gilhooly bent over the cars, picked them up carefully and turned them the other way along the V-shaped groove. "All aboard!" he cried, and a minute later he was off and away. "Poor Gilhooly!" murmured Quinn. "He is bringing excursionists to witness our execution. I am glad that he does not know what he is doing and that Meigs is asleep." Quinn laid his hand on my shoulder. "I deeply regret, Mr. Munn," he went on, "that I am the indirect cause of Gilhooly’s lunacy. It was a great surprise to me to find that his intellect was not strong enough to withstand the ordeal to which I subjected it." "It couldn’t be helped, professor," I returned. "It was a grand idea of yours—that of abducting these trust magnates and placing them where they could do no harm to the poor of our planet. What though one mind has been wrecked? Better that than the misery and enslavement of hundreds of thousands." "Mr. Munn," said the professor with feeling, "I thank you. Such words from a companion who is about to suffer jointly with me the extreme penalty prove that you are a man of parts and fitted for a nobler walk in life than the one you have heretofore taken. I am very, very sorry that you are to be cut off so soon." Quinn was fortitude itself, his courage born of a knowledge of duty well done. I am prone to believe, also, that I myself was not less firm, although a less laudable cause lay back of it. The square, I should judge, measured about two hundred feet on each side. While the professor and I were engaged in talk, sight-seers had been gathering in the streets, keeping carefully to the sidewalk boundaries of the open space. Every eye was turned upon the professor and myself and the sleeping Meigs. The broker was snoring dismally, the sound rumbling above the babble of the word-boxes and echoing through the adjacent thoroughfares.