The Man Who Ended War

“Are you the man who stopped all war?” I cried eagerly.

Dorothy reached my side and clung to me as John King advanced with hesitating steps.

“I am,” he answered slowly.

“Then why – then why did you destroy the yacht?” shouted Tom, stammering in his excitement. “How – how have you lived when the others perished?”

“The time to end had come,” said John, in muffled, solemn tones. “I alone am immune; I did not think I was.” As he spoke a still more awful change began to pass over his features. He staggered, stopped, and put his hand to his brow. “I – am – the – last – victim,” he went on falteringly. “I – pay – the – final – price.” The last words came in a thick gasp, “My secret is safe.”

As he said that, he fell, and when we reached him he lay dead. The expression of his face had changed again. The sombre, awful majesty which had illumined it was gone. He looked once more like the young lad I had known and loved in years gone by, whose face so well expressed his noble spirit, ever impatient of injustice and wrong. After the weary struggle, his soul was once more poised and at rest. The world and the man who stopped all war were both at peace.

THE END