"And here comes in one of the queerest phases in the exceeding queerness of these people of yours--all the while they are under the impression that they consider the increase of humanity as of the highest advantage, they have an unrecognised instinct which tells them that things will be mightily uncomfortable for them when their ball gets a little overfilled: and from this unrecognised instinct springs their partiality to anyone who thins them out. The Thinner-Out is the object of their very highest rewards---- "Ha! Look--look there, on that TERRA of yours. There's a great ship about to be wrecked--yes, there it goes, crashing on the rocks. There will be a wholesale bit of thinning-out there--no; see, one of your humans, by the exercise of superhuman energy, and at infinite risk to himself, is saving the whole lot of them. Every one of them is safe on land now. They are crowding round their preserver----" "Ha!" cried James. "Where are your precious cynical arguments _now_? Look at their gratitude--look how they grasp his hand, and kiss it, and----" [Illustration: SLAYER AND HEALER.] "Collect for him a sum amounting to nearly fifty pounds, and send him a medal, and mention him in the principal newspapers--nearly half a column in some!--and drop him," said William. "Of course," he continued, "there are several kinds of Thinners-Out--there's the one who spreads epidemics by travelling in public conveyances when suffering from communicable ailments: they don't reward him, because no particular effort is required for his kind of work--a child could do it: but he is protected by the laws. Who ever heard of anyone being visited by any heavier punishment than the fine of a few coins for wilfully thinning-out humans in this way? Nobody. Then there are two kinds of the class who go in for the most lucrative method of thinning-out--War. There's the warrior who thins out his fellow-creatures to gratify his own personal inclinations and ambitions; and there's the warrior who is forced to thin them out by the duty of defending his country against the former kind of warrior." "Ah! and the latter's the kind of warrior his fellow humans will heap the highest rewards upon," said James. "Oh, _is_ he?" said William. "All right; for the sake of curiosity let us just follow the career of a third boy--the little one that was knocked down by _my_ boy, and tended by yours. What is _he_ at now?" "Why, he is practising with a sword like your Bully; only he is practising parries instead of cuts; and he is also reading about words of command, and linked battalions, and machine-guns, and fortifications. And I recollect, by the way, that he was lately playing with a little toy town and trying to defend it." "Just so," said William. "He'll do very well, mind you; but the other kind of warrior--my Bully--will distance him in rewards by leagues. Halloa!--there's a booming of cannon, and a noise of screaming. What's doing?"