already spread and branched, until it points this way and that, and
henceforth our whole story is one of dissemination. To follow the Food
of the Gods further is to trace the ramifications of a perpetually
branching tree; in a little while, in the quarter of a lifetime, the
Food had trickled and increased from its first spring in the little farm
near Hickleybrow until it had spread,--it and the report and shadow of
its power,--throughout the world. It spread beyond England very
speedily. Soon in America, all over the continent of Europe, in Japan,
in Australia, at last all over the world, the thing was working towards
its appointed end. Always it worked slowly, by indirect courses and
against resistance. It was bigness insurgent. In spite of prejudice, in
spite of law and regulation, in spite of all that obstinate conservatism
that lies at the base of the formal order of mankind, the Food of the
Gods, once it had been set going, pursued its subtle and invincible
progress.

The children of the Food grew steadily through all these years; that was
the cardinal fact of the time. But it is the leakages make history. The
children who had eaten grew, and soon there were other children growing;
and all the best intentions in the world could not stop further leakages
and still further leakages. The Food insisted on escaping with the
pertinacity of a thing alive. Flour treated with the stuff crumbled in
dry weather almost as if by intention into an impalpable powder, and
would lift and travel before the lightest breeze. Now it would be some
fresh insect won its way to a temporary fatal new development, now some
fresh outbreak from the sewers of rats and such-like vermin. For some
days the village of Pangbourne in Berkshire fought with giant ants.
Three men were bitten and died. There would be a panic, there would be a
struggle, and the salient evil would be fought down again, leaving
always something behind, in the obscurer things of life--changed for