CHAPTER XII
IT was one hour after midnight.
Joh Fredersen came to his mother's house.
It was a farmhouse, one-storied, thatch-roofed, overshadowed by a walnut tree and it stood upon the flat back of one of the stone giants, not far from the cathedral. A garden full of lilies and hollyhocks, full of sweet peas and poppies and nasturtiums, wound itself about the house.
Joh Fredersen's mother had only one son and him she had very dearly loved. But the Master over the great Metropolis, the Master of the machine-city, the Brain of the New Tower of Babel had become a stranger to her and she hostile to him. She had had to look on once and see how one of Joh Fredersen's machine-Titans crushed men as though they were dried up wood. She had screamed to God. He had not heard her. She fell to the
