Solved: Extract Last Node in Variable

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
 xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:output method="xml"/>

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <html>
      <body>
      <xsl:variable name="v">
        <xsl:call-template name="HelloWorld"/>
      </xsl:variable>
      <xsl:variable name="x" select="v/*[position() != last()]"/>
      <xsl:copy-of select="$x"/>          
        </body>
    </html>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template name="HelloWorld">
    <p>Hello world!</p>
    <xsl:text>5</xsl:text>
  </xsl:template>
  
</xsl:stylesheet>

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I'm trying to strip off the "5" which is appended to the end. My desired output is

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><html><body><p>Hello world!</p></body></html>

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and I would also like to get that "5" into a variable.

The debugger shows variable v is:

and variable x is empty (my select isn't working).

Update: I see I forgot the $. Change that line to:

<xsl:variable name="x" select="$v/*[position() != last()]"/>

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and now I get an exception which says, "To use a result tree fragment in a path expression, first convert it to a node-set using the msxsl:node-set()". Great. (I actually used to know this stuff a few years ago! I've forgotten it all! How do I convert this to a node-set?)