‘_To the son or daughter of my line who shall be the head of the House of Arnold in the fifth generation from me:--When the world is threatened with the final ruin that I have foreshadowed, open this and read my words to all who are then dwelling in Aeria._ NATAS.’” The President paused, and everyone waited with most anxious expectation as he opened the envelope and took from it four square sheets of parchment. He unfolded them and went on-- “When Vassilis Cosmo brought me the transcription of the message from Mars I saw that the time had come to obey the injunction endorsed on this envelope. I opened it, and this is what I read:-- ‘The interpretation of the prophecy concerning the possible destruction of the world in the fifth generation from now, written by me in the twenty-fifth year of the Peace, and commanded to be read every fifth year in the ears of the descendants of those now dwelling in Aeria. ‘When the War of the Terror was over, and there was peace on earth, I devoted the declining years of my life to the study of that noblest of all sciences which teaches the lore of the stars and the constitution of the universe. In the fifteenth year of the Peace, that is to say, in the year of the Christian Era 1920, a new star appeared towards the constellation of Andromeda, which shone with great brilliancy for thirty-five nights, and then faded gradually away into the abysses of space. ‘Seeking into the causes of this phenomenon, I found that it was due to the collision of two opaque bodies beyond the bounds of the solar system, which doubtless had been travelling towards each other for centuries through space. So enormous was the heat evolved by the conversion of the motion of the two bodies, that their materials were resolved into their component elements, and what had been two bodies as solid as the earth, though immensely larger, now became an enormous fire-mist, a chaos of blazing storms and burning billows of incandescent matter. ‘I observed it closely from the time of its first appearance until the most powerful telescope at my command could no longer detect it. I found that, vastly remote as it was, the course which it pursued until it was lost to view proved that it was still within the sphere of the sun’s attraction, and that therefore a time must come when it would reach its point of greatest distance, and return.