Much may happen in a year's time.

The history of the few people involved in the making of this narrative presents but few new aspects, and yet there is now to be disclosed an unerring indication of great and perhaps enduring changes in the lives of every one concerned.
To begin with, Templeton Thorpe, at the age of seventy-eight, is lying at the edge of his grave.

On the day of his marriage with Anne Tresslyn, he put down his arms in the long and hopeless conflict with an enemy that knows no pity, a foe so supremely confident that man has been powerless to do more than devise a means to temporarily check its relentless fury.

The thing in Mr.Thorpe's side was demanding the tolls of victory.

There was no curbing its wrath: neither the soft nor the harsh answer of science had served to turn it away.