hands. The attendants knew him well by sight, since his visits to the library always exceeded the daily minimum prescribed by law; Thor-na'thor was a pious man.

When he was clean, he passed into the enormous adytum. He paused at the entrance to enjoy the deep pleasure which the sight of the vast room always roused in him.

From ceiling to floor it was lined with books; the biographies, lovingly, piously compiled, of every man, woman and child who had ever lived on Vardia since the enormously distant time when the art of writing had come to the race. Two balconies zoned the room, and everywhere were reading desks.

Thor-na'thor approached one of the librarians. He walked slowly, for he was thinking of what he had read above the door, "No one who ever lived deserves to die," and feeling for the thousandth time its deep truth.

The librarian greeted him courteously. "Will you have one of your friends," she asked, "or shall it be a stranger?"

"A stranger," Thor-na'thor replied without hesitation. It was considered far more pious to peruse a stranger's life than that of one of one's friends.

She went to a shelf, handed him a book. "No one has had this for a long time."

Thor-na'thor went over with it to a reading desk. He opened it, savoring to the full his grateful task of rescuing from oblivion one of the honored Vardian dead.

"Habor-binhabor," he read in the second chapter, "was inordinately fond of the old-fashioned game of matzor. On the ninth of Satatius, 20034, he stayed up until after midnight playing it, and on another occasion."

Thor-na'thor closed the volume over his forefinger. How strange the earth people were, he thought, how violent, how crude, how young! Heartless, too—witness how they had let their comrade Kynaston die utterly. There had been not the slightest attempt to write his biography. Perhaps, as their race grew older, they would learn that the whole purpose of man on earth is to keep alive the memory of the honored dead. Perhaps they would learn then that no one who is remembered ever dies.

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