"All, all are gone, the old familiar faces." Then slowly Verrill began to make the circuit of the table, reading, as if from a roll call, the names written on the cards which lay upon the place-plates. "Anderson, ... Evans, ... Copeland,—dear old ’crooked-face’ Copeland, his camp companion in those Maine fishing-trips of the old days, dead now these ten years.... Stryker,—’Buff’ Stryker they had called him, dead,—he had forgotten how long,—drowned in his yacht off the Massachusetts coast; Harris, died of typhoid somewhere in Italy; Dick Herndon, killed in a mine accident in Mexico; Rice, old ’Whitey Rice’ a suicide in a California cattle town; Curtice, carried off by fever in Durban, South Africa." Thus around the whole table he moved, telling the bead-roll of death, following in the footsteps of the Monster who never relented, who never tired, who never, never,—never forgot. His own turn would come some day. Verrill, sunken into his chair, put his hands over his eyes. Yes his own turn would come. There was no escape. That dreadful face would rise again before his eyes. He would bow his back to the scourge of nations, he would roll helpless beneath the wheels of the great car. How to face that prospect with fortitude! How to look into those terrible grey eyes with calm! Oh, the terror of that gorgon face, oh, the horror of those sightless, lightless grey eyes! But suddenly midnight struck. He heard the strokes come booming upward from the city streets. His vigil was all but over. Verrill opened the bottle of wine, breaking the seal that had been affixed to the cork on the night of the first meeting of the club. Filling his glass, he rose in his place. His eyes swept the table, and while for the last time the memories came thronging back, his lips formed the words: "To the Absent Ones: to you, Curtice, Anderson, Brill, to you, Copeland, to you, Stryker, to you, Arnold, to you all, my old comrades, all you old familiar faces who are absent to-night." He emptied the glass, but immediately filled it again. The last toast was to be drunk, the last of all. Verrill, the glass raised, straightened himself. But even as he stood there, glass in hand, he shivered slightly. He made note of it for the moment, yet his emotions had so shaken him during all that evening that he could well understand the little shudder that passed over him for a moment. But he caught himself glancing at the windows. All were shut. The doors of the hall were closed, the flames of the chandeliers were steady. Whence came then this certain sense of coolness that so suddenly had invaded the air? The coolness was not disagreeable, but none the less the temperature of the room had been lowered, at least so he could fancy. Yet already he was dismissing the matter from his mind. No doubt the weather had changed suddenly.