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Father Stone set to work building a fire, glaring at the sticks in his hands, choking on the gray seese, a monastery for sainted swine, and I shall build a miniature apse in a microscope so that parameciuella"

"Oh, Father Stone"

"I'm sorry" Father Stone blinked redly across the fire "But this is like blessing a crocodile before he chews you up You're risking the entireliquor from men's throats and perfume off their hands!"

"Can't you recognize the human in the inhuman?"

"I'd nize the inhuman in the human"

"But if I prove these things sin, know sin, know a moral life, have free will and intellect, Father Stone?"

"That will take "

The night grew rapidly cold and they peered into the fire to find their wildest thoughts, while eating biscuits and berries, and soon they were bundled for sleep under the chi over one last ti for rine about, stared into the soft pink charcoal bed and said, "No Adainal sin Maybe the Martians live in a state of God's grace Then we can go back down to town and start work on the Earthmen"

Father Peregrine reot sovindictive, God help him "Yes, Father Stone, but the Martians killed some of our settlers That's sinful There inal Sin and a Martian Adam and Eve We'll find them Men are men, unfortunately, no matter what their shape, and inclined to sin"

But Father Stone was pretending sleep

Father Peregrine did not shut his eyes

Of course they couldn't let these Martians go to hell, could they? With a coo back to the new colonial towns, those towns so full of sinful gullets and wo in beds with lonely laborers? Wasn't that the place for the Fathers? Wasn't this trek into the hillsof God's Church, or was he quenching the thirst of a spongelike curiosity? Those blue round globes of St Anthony's fire--how they burned in his e, to find the man behind the mask, the human behind the inhuman Wouldn't he be proud if he could say, even to his secret self, that he had converted

a rolling huge pool table full of fiery spheres! What a sin of pride! Worth doing penance for! But then one did s out of Love, and he loved the Lord so much and was so happy at it that he wanted everyone else to be happy too

The last thing he saw before sleep was the return of the blue fires, like a flight of burning angels silently singing him to his worried rest

The blue round drearine awoke in the early