.

?" father began, then paused.
"I mean that there is a shadow of something colossal and menacing that even now is beginning to fall across the land.

Call it the shadow of an oligarchy, if you will; it is the nearest I dare approximate it.

What its nature may be I refuse to imagine.* But what I wanted to say was this: You are in a perilous position--a peril that my own fear enhances because I am not able even to measure it.

Take my advice and accept the vacation." * Though, like Everhard, they did not dream of the nature of it, there were men, even before his time, who caught glimpses of the shadow.