The music swept through every city street and purged the evil and the sin before it. The Hater dropped his pipe and barely could retrieve it from beneath the thousand driving feet.

The Song had come, and for one swelling surge of love there was no room for hate.

Even the sentinels upon the walls raised their hands, threw their bearded faces to the sky and cried out over all the world beneath them, “Halana to the Troubadour, Earthmaker’s only Son.”

XVI

SYLLOGISM

Major Premise:

God is a custom.

Minor Premise:

A custom is an old, old habit.

Conclusion:

Therefore, God is an old, old habit.

The singing and the dancing swept the crowd in joyful madness till all the city gathered in the Plaza of Humanity—a colonnaded forum around the Shrine of Older Life.

The Shrine of Older Life was attended by the Keepers of the Ancient Ways. They were every one gray-bearded and wore the pointed hats, the custom of their ordered service at the shrine. Each sang the hymns of their tradition and kept with strict obedience the rituals of the ages.

Since the Holiday of Hope had come the Grand Musician was himself the chief director of the liturgy. The formality of the great high adoration was broken by the singing and dancing crowd that swept through the Holy Square. The Singer went before them in a sea of warm approval till he stood beneath the towering Shrine of Older Life. It glittered in the sun and lifted up its marble proclamation to the world.

An acolyte of lower caste rang a brazen gong that brought the roaring crowd to silence and only then did the Grand Musician rise to speak.

“What does this uproar mean?” he asked.

A single voice rose from the sea of faces. “We have found the long-awaited Troubadour. He knows the Ancient Star-Song!”

“Yes! Yes!” cried the throng, “He knows the Ancient Star-Song—He is the Troubadour, Son of Earthmaker!” The mere suggestion of the joyous prose began the cries of “Halana” all over again. Once again the gong restored a silence to the square. The Grand Musician turned to the Singer.

“Is it true? Are you the Troubadour? Can you sing the Ancient Star-Song?”

“I am he. I know the song.”

“Then sing it now,” agreed the Keepers of the Ancient Ways.

The Singer took his lyre and strummed the strings. The chords fell outward over all the throng.

The audience grew still. He sang the very words he first had sung before his mother. Above him towered the wall and high upon the bulwark he saw the framework of a strange machine. It was the great machine on which false singers met their death.

He knew then what it meant to sing a new song.

And then his finger swept the strings and he began the final verse.

XVII

A finale is not always the best song but it is always the last.