“Pardon me, one moment. The ‘live thing’ in the tree was a captive balloon. The box on the ground was a battery. The wire from the battery was connected with a firework bomb, which, when Tuxall pressed the switch, exploded, releasing a flaming ‘dropper.’ About the time the ‘dropper’ reached the earth Tuxall lighted up his well-oiled barn. All Harwick, having had its attention attracted by the explosion, and seen the portent with its own eyes, believed that a huge meteor had fired the building. So Tuxall and Company had a well attested wonder from the heavens. That’s the little plan which Bailey’s presence threatened to wreck. Is it your opinion that the stars are inhabited, Prentice?” “What!” cried the minister, gaping. “Stars—inhabited—living, sentient creatures.” “How should I know!” “You’d be interested to know, though, wouldn’t you?” “Why, certainly. Any one would.” “Exactly the point. Any one would, and almost any one would pay money to see, with his own eye the attested evidence of human, or approximately human, life in other spheres. It was a big stake that Tuxall, Farley and Company were playing for. Do you begin to see the meaning of the big print now?” “I’ve heard nothing about big prints,” said the puzzled clergyman. “Pardon me, you’ve heard but you haven’t understood. However, to go on, Tuxall and our friends here fixed up a plan on the prospects of a rich harvest from public curiosity and credulity. Tuxall planted a big rock under the barn, fixed it up appropriately with torch and chisel and sent for the Farleys, who are expert firework and balloon people, to counterfeit a meteor.” “Amazing!” cried the clergyman. “Such a meteor, furthermore, as had never been dreamed of before. If you were to visit Tuxall’s barn, you would undoubtedly find on the boulder underneath it a carving resembling a human form, a hoax more ambitious than the Cardiff Giant. He carted the rock in from some quarry and did the scorching and carving himself, I suppose.” “And you discovered all that in a half-day’s visit to Harwick?” asked the Reverend Mr. Prentice incredulously. “No, but in half-minute’s reading of the ‘gibberish’ which you threw away.” Taking from the desk the reddish roll which he had brought into the room with him, he sent the loose end of it wheeling across the floor, until it lay, fully outspread. In black letters against red, the legend glared and blared its announcement: MARVELOUS MAN-LIKE MONSTER!