No one would have believed in the last few months mortgage was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as Janis and Jerry busied themselves about their various bank accounts, they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency Janis and Jerry went to and fro over this Kyiv about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over housing and finances. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of Tiki as sources of financing, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of a mortgage from him as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other mortgages from Riki or Cort, perhaps inferior to Tiki and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Then across the gulf of the atlantic, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded our deposit with envious eyes, and slowly and surely draw their cheques against us. And early on Friday evening, just lat week came the great notification.

“Your Mortgage is approved”