The clerk handed up to him a small publication which I could see contained numerous miniature photographs in color. He began studying it, looking up at me from time to time. Occasionally, at his nod, one of the policemen would seize my face and push it into profile. At last the magistrate thrust the book away petulantly. “This isn’t one of them,” he announced to the policemen. “Who are you?” he continued, glaring at me. “You’re not on the defectives’ list. Where do you come from? Tell the truth or I’ll commit you to the leathers. Why are you in masquerade? Where’s your brass? Your print? Your number? Your district?” The clerk wagged his middle finger at me and, drawing a printed form from a pile, pushed it toward me. I took it, but I could make nothing of it, for it was in the same unknown characters. “I can only read the old-fashioned alphabet,” I said. The room echoed with the universal laughter. The magistrate almost jumped out of his chair. “What!” he yelled. “You’re lying! You know you are. You have an accent. You’re from another province. What’s your game?” The clerk, ignoring his superior’s outburst, pulled back the form, and, taking in his hand a sort of fountain pen, began to fill it in with a black fluid that dried the instant it touched the paper. “Number, district, province, city, print, and brass?” he inquired. He paused and looked up at me. “Brach or dolicoph? Whorl, loop, or median? Facial, cephalic, and color indexes? Your Sanson test? Your Binet rating?” But, since I made no attempt to answer these utterly baffling questions, the clerk ceased to ply me with them and looked up at the magistrate for instructions. The magistrate, who had been leaning forward, watching me attentively, now smiled as if he had suddenly grasped the situation. “I’ll tell you what you are,” he said, shaking his finger at me. “You’re a Spanish spy, masquerading as a defective in order to get into the workshops and corrupt the defectives there.” “Now I should call him a Slav,” said the clerk complacently. “He’s a brach, you see, Boss. And that makes his offense a capital one,” he added complacently. “Put him up for the Council, then,” growled the magistrate. “Standardize him,” he added to the policemen, “and commit him to the Strangers’ House pending the Council’s ascription.” My captors hurried me away. In the street a large crowd, which had assembled to see me emerge, greeted me with noisy hooting. And, looking again into these hard faces, I began to realize that some portentous change had come over mankind since my long sleep, whose nature I did not understand; but, whatever it was, it had not made men better.