“They call this tower ‘Rupert’s Folly,’” he said privately; “and I
laugh, settin’ up here in my shell. D’ye think they’d laugh too, if
they guessed where the smut came from that blasted of their crops?”
“From you?” I whispered.
He bent over, and pointed upwards. For the first time I noticed that
the muzzle of a telescope projected from the little dome on the roof.
While I was gazing, I suddenly felt my wrist in the clutch of his
apish claw.
“Hush!” he said. “It’s there I gathers my star-powder, and discharges
it where I will. I’m Briareus, the last of the Uranids, left behind to
rack the world to all eternity for its presumption.”
He let me go, squinting and nodding at me. I backed from him in
horror. Nothing was plain to me but that here was one of those
astrologic demons who delight to bring heaven close that they may
measure our remoteness from it, and to cast away poor souls amidst the
eternal silences. That he seemed to rave was nothing. Such inhumanity
is in itself a madness.
“Ay,” he chuckled, hugging himself in a secret way, “you didn’t expect
that, did you? You must be a god to lust in pain. Why, lord, child!
the earth would be drab all over but for its galls and breakings. See
where I’ve set a withered crop among the green; see where I’ve teased
the soil to scarlet--a blazing core of fever. I know the World, the
wanton. So long as she can cover her cancer with a ribbon, she’ll
smile. By and by I shall set a spark to the west, and burn up the
day’s rubbish. Look when the sun drops, and you’ll see it a little
point of white, and afterwards a bonfire.”