There would still be sorrow and tragedy in the wake of the thing we had done. Couples who had spent lifetimes together had found themselves split, their mutual memories lost forever, as one turned infantile and looked mindlessly at the other. Men who had been forces for good in England (the usurpers were not intent on corrupting our daily lives, be it remembered, but on taking over our whole plane) had become useless hulks, great dribbling infants in old bodies. Many suicides had followed the plague of total amnesia. Yet if my ray of hope chanced to be true, it took nine-tenths of the curse of the business off our consciences. And some of the problems connected with the plague would then appear much smaller, and even rather funny; as for example, the twenty-seven thousand adolescents and adults who had never been house-broken.... Well! I came back to myself, filled up my glass again, and drank Arold's toast to Lord Nelson. How he ever crept into our party, I'm sure I don't know. By then, perhaps, we were all a little bit drunk; so we welcomed Lord Nelson, and drank to him joyously. Then we drank a final round to our long bitter fight with the usurpers, and we adjourned for the night. The next day we separated, each to his own place, and the great adventure was over at last. CHAPTER XXV It is just a year since we drove the usurpers out of England. (About the robots that they left behind, my hunch was right; for they are learning to take care of themselves, to walk and speak and act decently, and many have even begun to read and think again. When I consider this, I am inclined to go to my knees in thanks. What _might_ have happened...!) For a while I could not realize that my wild bluff had actually worked. I kept expecting a trick, a wholesale re-invasion of our world by the ogres. Even yet it is hard to comprehend. I suppose the only explanation is that all created things hate and fear death: in their fashion, the usurpers were just as scared of dying as the humblest human, and must have decided that the vicarious pleasures of earth weren't worth it. Selfish fear gripped them, selfish deadly fear of murder in the dark. They shrugged themselves out of their stolen bodies, and abandoned the world they had hoped to conquer. The simplest of weapons, the easiest to employ, had done our work for us in a manner beyond our most optimistic dreams. The simplest weapon ... fear. Marion and I were married, of course, a year ago. The delirious happiness of our marriage has not cooled for me. Some day, perhaps, my feeling will have calmed to a steady, staid, cozy sort of affection; but not yet. Not for a long time yet. I bought a little bookshop in Bury St. Edmunds, and took in Geoff and Alec as partners. It's the proper life for a quartet of reformed crusaders like the three of us and Marion. Peaceful, contemplative, and yet stimulating. We like it. And we like being together.