“All earth is ours. And the day shall come, when the stars, looking down on this little world, shall see no spot where the soil is moist and dark with the blood of man shed by his fellow man; the sun shall rise in the East and set in the West and shed his light across this little globe; and nowhere shall he see man crushed by his fellows. And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. And instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree; and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and man shall nowhere crush man on all the holy earth. Tomorrow’s sun shall rise,” said the stranger, “and it shall flood these dark kopjes with light, and the rocks shall glint in it. Not more certain is that rising than the coming of that day. And I say to you that even here, in the land where now we stand, where today the cries of the wounded and the curses of revenge ring in the air; even here, in this land where man creeps on his belly to wound his fellow in the dark, and where an acre of gold is worth a thousand souls, and a reef of shining dirt is worth half a people, and the vultures are heavy with man’s flesh--even here that day shall come. I tell you, Peter Simon Halket, that here on the spot where now we stand shall be raised a temple. Man shall not gather in it to worship that which divides; but they shall stand in it shoulder to shoulder, white man with black, and the stranger with the inhabitant of the land; and the place shall be holy; for men shall say, ‘Are we not brethren and the sons of one Father?’” Peter Halket looked upward silently. And the stranger said: “Certain men slept upon a plain, and the night was chill and dark. And, as they slept, at that hour when night is darkest, one stirred. Far off to the eastward, through his half-closed eyelids, he saw, as it were, one faint line, thin as a hair’s width, that edged the hill tops. And he whispered in the darkness to his fellows: ‘The dawn is coming.’ But they, with fast-closed eyelids murmured, ‘He lies, there is no dawn.’ “Nevertheless, day broke.” The stranger was silent. The fire burnt up in red tongues of flame that neither flickered nor flared in the still night air. Peter Halket crept near to the stranger. “When will that time be?” he whispered; “in a thousand years’ time?” And the stranger answered, “A thousand years are but as our yesterday’s journey, or as our watch tonight, which draws already to its close. See, piled, these rocks on which we now stand? The ages have been young and they have grown old since they have lain here. Half that time shall not pass before that time comes; I have seen its dawning already in the hearts of men.” Peter moved nearer, so that he almost knelt at the stranger’s feet: his gun lay on the ground at the other side of the fire.