University of Virginia Library

3.1. SATURN.

Landing on a place about ten degrees north of the equator, so that they might obtain a good view of the great rings — since on the line only the thin edge would be visible — they opened a port-hole with the same caution they had exercised on Jupiter. Again there was a rush of air, showing that the pressure without was greater than that within; but on this occasion the barometer stopped at thirty-eight, from which they calculated that the pressure was nineteen pounds to the square inch on their bodies, instead of fifteen as at sea-level on earth. This difference was so slight that they scarcely felt it. They also discarded the apergetic outfits that had been so useful on Jupiter, as unnecessary here. The air was an icy blast, and though they quickly closed the opening, the interior of the Callisto was considerably chilled.

"We shall want our winter clothes," said Bearwarden; "it might be more comfortable for us exactly on the equator, though the scene at night will be far finer here, if we can stand the climate. Doubtless it will also be warmer soon, for the sun has but just risen."

"I suspect this is merely one of the cold waves that rush towards the equator at this season, which corresponds to about the 10th of our September," replied Cortlandt. "The poles of Saturn must be intensely cold during its long winter of fourteen and three quarter years, for, the axis being inclined twenty-seven degrees from the perpendicular of its orbit, the pole turned from the sun is more shut off from its heat than ours, and in addition to this the mean distance — more than eight hundred and eighty million miles — is very great. Since the chemical composition of the air we have inhaled has not troubled our lungs, it is fair to suppose we shall have no difficulty in breathing."

Having dressed themselves more warmly, and seen by a thermometer they had placed outside that the temperature was thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, which had seemed very cold compared with the

warmth inside the Callisto, they again opened the port-hole, this time leaving it open longer. What they had felt before was evidently merely a sudden gust, for the air was now comparatively calm.

Finding that the doctor's prediction as to the suitability of the air to their lungs was correct, they ventured out, closing the door as they went.

Expecting, as on Jupiter, to find principally vertebrates of the reptile and bird order, they carried guns and cartridges loaded with buckshot and No. 1, trusting for solid-ball projectiles to their revolvers, which they shoved into their belts. They also took test-tubes for experiments on the Saturnian bacilli. Hanging a bucket under the pipe leading from the roof, to catch any rain that might fall — for they remembered the scarcity of drinking-water on Jupiter — they set out in a southwesterly direction.

Walking along, they noticed on all sides tall lilies immaculately pure in their whiteness, and mushrooms and toadstools nearly a foot high, the former having a delicious flavour and extreme freshness, as though only an hour old. They had seen no animal life, or even sign of it, and were wondering at its dearth, when suddenly two large white birds

rose directly in front of them. Like thought, Bearwarden and Ayrault had their guns up, snapping the thumb-pieces over "safe" and pulling the triggers almost simultaneously. Bearwarden, having double buckshot, killed his bird at the first fire; but Ayrault, having only No. 1, had to give his the second barrel, almost all damage in both cases being in the head. On coming close to their victims they found them to measure twelve feet from tip to tip, and to have a tremendous thickness of feathers and down.

"From the looks of these beauties," said Bearwarden, "I should say they probably inhabited a pretty cold place."

"They are doubtless northern birds," said Cortlandt, "that have just come south. It is easy to believe that the depth to which the temperature may fall in the upper air of this planet must be something startling."

As they turned from the cranes, to which species the birds seemed to belong, they became mute with astonishment. Every mushroom had disappeared, but the toadstools still remained.

"Is it possible we did not see them?" gasped Ayrault.

"We must inadvertently have walked some distance since we saw them," said Cortlandt.

"They were what I looked forward to for lunch," exclaimed Bearwarden.

They were greatly perplexed. The mushrooms were all about them when they shot the birds, which still lay where they had fallen.

"We must be very absent-minded," said the doctor, "or perchance our brains are affected by the air. We must analyze it to see if it contains our own proportion of oxygen and nitrogen. There was a good deal of carbonic-acid gas on Jupiter, but that would hardly confuse our senses. The strange thing is, that we all seem to have been impressed the same way."

Concluding that they must have been mistaken, they continued on their journey.

All about they heard a curious humming, as that of bees, or like the murmuring of prayers in a resonant cathedral. Thinking it was the wind in the great trees that grew singly around them, they paid no attention to it until, emerging on an open plain and finding that the sound continued, they stopped.

"Now," said Bearwarden, "this is more curious than anything we found on Jupiter. Here we have

an incessant and rather pleasant sound, with no visible cause."

"It may possibly be some peculiarity of the grass," replied Cortlandt, "though, should it continue when we reach sandy or bare soil, I shall believe we need a dose of quinine."

"I feel perfectly well," said Ayrault; "how is it with you?"

Each finding that he was in a normal state, they proceeded, determined, if possible, to discover the source from which the sounds came. Suddenly Bearwarden raised his gun to bring down a long-beaked hawk; but the bird flew off, and he did not shoot. "Plague the luck!" said he; "I went blind just as I was about to pull. A haze seemed to cover both barrels, and completely screened the bird."

"The Callisto will soon be hidden by those trees," said Cortlandt. "I think we had better take our bearings, for, if our crack shot is going to miss like that, we may want canned provisions."

Accordingly, he got out his sextant, took the altitude of the sun, got cross-bearings and a few angles, and began to make a rough calculation. For several minutes he worked industriously, used the rubber at

the end of his pencil, tried again, and then scratched out. "That humming confuses me so that I cannot work correctly," said he, "while the most irrelevant things enter my mind in spite of me, and mix up my figures."

"I found the same thing," said Bearwarden, "but said nothing, for fear I should not be believed. In addition to going blind, for a moment I almost forgot what I was trying to do."

Changing their course slightly, they went towards a range of hills, in the hope of finding rocky or sandy soil, in order to test the sounds, and ascertain if they would cease or vary.

Having ascended a few hundred feet, they sat down near some trees to rest, the musical hum continuing meanwhile unchanged. The ground was strewn with large coloured crystals, apparently rubies, sapphires, and emeralds, about the size of hens' eggs, and also large sheets of isinglass. Picking up one of the latter, Ayrault examined it. Points of light and shade kept forming on its surface, from which rings radiated like the circles spreading in all directions from a place in still water at which a pebble is thrown. He called his companions, and the

three examined it. The isinglass was about ten inches long by eight across, and contained but few impurities. In addition to the spreading rings, curious forms were continually taking shape and dissolving.

"This is more interesting," said Bearwarden, than sounding shells at the sea-shore. We must make a note of it as another thing to study."

They then spread their handkerchiefs on a mound of earth, so as to make a table, and began examining the gems.

"Does it not seem to you," asked Ayrault, a few minutes later, addressing his companions, "as though we were not alone? I have thought many times there was some one — or perhaps several persons — here besides ourselves."

"The same idea has occurred to me," replied Cortlandt. "I was convinced, a moment ago, that a shadow crossed the page on which I was taking notes. Can it be there are objects about us we cannot see? We know there are vibrations of both light and sound that do not affect our senses. I wish we had brought the magnetic eye; perchance that might tell us."

Anything sufficiently dense to cast a shadow,"

said Ayrault, "should be seen, since it would also be able to make an image on our retinas. I believe any impressions we are receiving are produced through our minds, as if some one were thinking very intently about us, and that neither the magnetic eye nor a sensitive plate could reveal anything."

They then returned to the study of the isinglass, which they were able to split into extremely thin sheets. Suddenly a cloud passed over the table, and almost immediately disappeared, and then a sharpened pencil with which Ayrault had been writing began to trace on a sheet of paper, in an even hand, and with a slight frictional sound.

"Stop!" said Bearwarden; "let us each for himself describe in writing what he has seen."

In a moment they had done this, and then compared notes. In each case the vision was the same. Then they looked at the writing made by the invisible hand. "Absorpta est mors in Victoria," it ran.

Gentlemen, began Bearwarden, as if addressing a meeting, "this cannot be coincidence; we are undoubtedly and unquestionably in the presence of a spirit or of several spirits. That they understand Latin, we see; and, from what they say, they may

have known death. Time may show whether they have been terrestrials like ourselves. Though the conditions of life here might make us delirious, it is scarcely possible that different temperaments like ours should be affected in so precisely the same way; besides, in this writing we have tangible proof."

"It is perfectly reasonable," said Ayrault, "to conclude it was a spirit, if we may assume that spirits have the power to move the pencil, which is a material object. Nobody doubts nowadays that after death we live again; that being the case, we must admit that we live somewhere. Space, as I take it, can be no obstacle to a spirit; therefore, why suppose they remain on earth?"

"This is a wonderful place," said Cortlandt. "We have already seen enough to convince us of the existence of many unknown laws. I wish the spirit would reveal itself in some other way."

As he finished speaking, the rays of the distant and cold-looking sun were split, and the colours of the spectrum danced upon the linen cloth, as if obtained by a prism. In astonishment, they rose and looked closely at the table, when suddenly a shadow that no one recognized as his own appeared upon the

cover. Tracing it to its source, their eyes met those of an old man with a white robe and beard and a look of great intelligence on his calm face. They knew he had not been in the little grove thirty seconds before, and as this was surrounded by open country there was no place from which he could have come.

3.2. THE SPIRIT'S FIRST VISIT.

Greetings and congratulations," he said. "Man has steadfastly striven to rise, and we see the results in you."

"I have always believed in the existence of spirits," said Cortlandt, "but never expected to see one with my natural eyes."

"And you never will, in its spiritual state," replied the shade, "unless you supplement sight with reason. A spirit has merely existence, entity, and will, and is entirely invisible to your eyes."

"How is it, then, that we see and hear you?" asked Cortlandt. "Are you a man, or a spectre that is able to affect our senses?"

"I was a man," replied the spirit, "and I have given myself visible and tangible form to warn you of danger. My colleagues and I watched you when

you left the cylinder and when you shot the birds, and, seeing your doom in the air, have been trying to communicate with you."

"What were the strange shadows and prismatic colours that kept passing across our table?" asked Bearwarden.

"They were the obstructions and refractions of light caused by spirits trying to take shape," replied the shade.

"Do you mind our asking you questions?" said Cortlandt.

"No," replied their visitor. "If I can, I will answer them."

"Then," said Cortlandt, "how is it that, of the several spirits that tried to become embodied, we see but one, namely, you?"

"That," said the shade, "is because no natural law is broken. On earth one man can learn a handicraft better in a few days than another in a month, while some can solve with ease a mathematical problem that others could never grasp. So it is here. Perhaps I was in a favourable frame of mind on dying, for the so-called supernatural always interested me on earth, or I had a natural aptitude for these

things; for soon after death I was able to affect the senses of the friends I had left."

"Are we to understand, then," asked Cortlandt, "that the reason more of our departed do not reappear to us is because they cannot?"

"Precisely," replied the shade. "But though the percentage of those that can return and reappear on earth is small, their number is fairly large. History has many cases. We know that the prophet Samuel raised the witch of Endor at the behest of Saul; that Moses and Elias became visible in the transfiguration; and that after his crucifixion and burial Christ returned to his disciples, and was seen and heard by many others."

"How," asked Bearwarden deferentially, "do you occupy your time?"

"Time, replied the spirit, "has not the same significance to us that it has to you. You know that while the earth rotates in twenty-four hours, this planet takes but about ten; and the sun turns on its own axis but once in a terrestrial month; while the years of the planets vary from less than three months for Mercury to Neptune's one hundred and sixty-four years. Being insensible to heat and cold,

darkness and light, we have no more changing seasons, neither is there any night. When a man dies," he continued with solemnity, "he comes at once into the enjoyment of senses vastly keener than any be possessed before. Our eyes — if such they can be called — are both microscopes and telescopes, the change in focus being effected as instantaneously as thought, enabling us to perceive the smallest microbe or disease-germ, and to see the planets that revolve about the stars. The step of a fly is to us as audible as the tramp of a regiment, while we hear the mechanical and chemical action of a snake's poison on the blood of any poor creature bitten, as plainly as the waves on the shore. We also have a chemical and electrical sense, showing us what effect different substances will have on one another, and what changes to expect in the weather. The most complex and subtle of our senses, however, is a sort of second sight that we call intuition or prescience, which we are still studying to perfect and understand. With our eyes closed it reveals to us approaching astronomical and other bodies, or what is happening on the other side of the planet, and enables us to view the future as you do the past. The eyes of all but the highest angels require some light, and can be dazzled by an excess; but this attribute of divinity nothing can obscure, and it is the sense that will first enable us to know God. By means of these new and sharpened faculties, which, like children, we are continually learning to use to better advantage, we constantly increase our knowledge, and this is next to our greatest happiness."

"Is there any limit," asked Bearwarden, "to human progress on the earth?"

"Practically none," replied the spirit. "Progress depends largely on your command of the forces of Nature. At present your principal sources of power are food, fuel, electricity, the heat of the interior of the earth, wind, and tide. From the first two you cannot expect much more than now, but from the internal heat everywhere available, tradewinds, and falling water, as at Niagara, and from tides, you can obtain power almost without limit. Were this all, however, your progress would be slow; but the Eternal, realizing the shortness of your lives, has given you power with which to rend the globe. You have the action of all uncombined chemicals, atmospheric electricity, the excess or froth of which

you now see in thunderstorms, and the electricity and magnetism of your own bodies. There is also molecular and sympathetic vibration, by which Joshua not understandingly levelled the walls of Jericho; and the power of your minds over matter, but little more developed now than when I moved in the flesh upon the earth. By lowering large quantities of high-powered explosives to the deepest parts of the ocean bed, and exploding them there, you can produce chasms through which some water will be forced towards the heated interior by the enormous pressure of its own weight. At a comparatively slight depth it will be converted into steam and produce an earthquake. This will so enlarge your chasm, that a great volume of water will rush into the red-hot interior, which will cause a series of such terrific eruptions that large islands will be upheaved. By the reduction of the heat of that part of the interior there will also be a shrinkage, which, in connection with the explosions, will cause the earth's solid crust to be thrown up in folds till whole continents appear. Some of the water displaced by the new land will also, as a result of the cooling, be able permanently to penetrate farther, thereby decreasing by that much the amount of water in the oceans, so that the tide-level in your existing seaports will be but slightly changed. By persevering in this work, you will become so skilled that it will be possible to evoke land of whatever kind you wish, at any place; and by having high table-land at the equator, sloping off into low plains towards north and south, and maintaining volcanoes in eruption at the poles to throw out heat and start warm ocean currents, it will be possible, in connection with the change you are now making in the axis, to render the conditions of life so easy that the earth will support a far larger number of souls.

"With the powers at your disposal you can also alter and improve existing continents, and thereby still further increase the number of the children of men. Perhaps with mild climate, fertile soil, and decreased struggle for existence, man will develop his spiritual side.

"Finally, you have apergy, one of the highest forces, for it puts you almost on a plane with angels, and with it you have already visited Jupiter and Saturn. It was impossible that man should remain chained to the earth during the entire life of his race,

like an inferior animal or a mineral, lower even in freedom of body than birds. Heretofore you have, as I have said, seen but one side in many workings of Nature, as if you had discovered either negative or positive electricity, but not both; for gravitation and apergy are as inseparably combined in the rest of the universe as those two, separated temporarily on earth that the discovery of the utilization of one with the other might serve as an incentive to your minds. You saw it in Nature on Jupiter in the case of several creatures, suspecting it in the boa-constrictor and Will-o'-the-wisp and jelly-fish, and have standing illustrations of it in all tailed comets — luminosity in the case of large bodies being one manifestation — in the rings of this planet, and in the molecular motion and porosity of all gases, liquids, and solids on earth; since what else is it that keeps the molecules apart, heat serving merely to increase its power? God made man in his own image; does it not stand to reason that he will allow him to continue to become more and more like himself? Would he begrudge him the power to move mountains through the intelligent application of Nature's laws, when he himself said they might be moved by faith? So far you have been content to use the mechanical power of water, its momentum or dead weight merely; to attain a much higher civilization, you must break it up chemically and use its constituent gases."

"How," asked Bearwarden, "can this be done?"

"Force superheated steam," replied the spirit, "through an intensely heated substance, as you now do in making water-gas — preferably platinum heated by electricity — apply an apergetic shock, and the oxygen and hydrogen will separate like oil and water, the oxygen being so much the heavier. Lead them in different directions as fast as the water is decomposed — since otherwise they would reunite — and your supply of power will be inexhaustible."

"Will you not stay and dine with us?" asked Ayrault. "While in the flesh you must be subject to its laws, and must need food to maintain your strength, like ourselves."

"It will give me great pleasure," replied the spirit, "to tarry with you, and once more to taste earthly food, but most of all to have the blessed joy of being of service to you. Here, all being immaterial spirits, no physical injury can befall any of us; and since no one wants anything that any one else can give, we

have no opportunity of doing anything for each other. You see we neither eat nor sleep, neither can any of us again know physical pain or death, nor can we comfort one another, for every one knows the truth about himself and every one else, and we read one another's thoughts as an open book."

"Do you," asked Bearwarden, "not eat at all?

"We absorb vitality in a sense," replied the spirit. "As the sun combines certain substances into food for mortals, it also produces molecular vibration and charges the air with magnetism and electricity, which we absorb without effort. In fact, there is a faint pleasure in the absorption of this strength, when, in magnetic disturbances, there is an unusual amount of immortal food. Should we try to resist it, there would eventually be a greater pressure without than within, and we should assimilate involuntarily. We are part of the intangible universe, and can feel no hunger that is not instantly appeased, neither can we ever more know thirst."

"Why," asked Cortlandt reverently, " did the angel with the sword of flame drive Adam from the Tree of Life, since with his soul he had received that which could never die?"

"That was part of the mercy of God," the shade replied; "for immortality could be enjoyed but meagrely on earth, where natural limitations are so abrupt. And know this, ye who are something of chemists, that had Adam eaten of that substance called fruit, he would have lived in the flesh to this day, and would have been of all men the most unhappy."

"Will the Fountain of Youth ever be discovered?" asked Cortlandt.

"That substances exist," replied the spirit, "that render it impossible for the germs of old age and decay to lodge in the body, I know; in fact, it would be a break in the continuity and balance of Nature did they not; but I believe their discovery will be coincident with Christ's second visible advent on earth. You are, however, only on the shore of the ocean of knowledge, and, by continuing to advance in geometric ratio, will soon be able to retain your mortal bodies till the average longevity exceeds Methuselah's; but, except for more opportunities of doing good, or setting a longer example to your fellows by your lives, where would be the gain?

"I now see how what appeared to me while I

lived on earth insignificant incidents, were the acts of God, and that what I thought injustice or misfortune was but evidence of his wisdom and love; for we know that not a sparrow falleth without God, and that the hairs of our heads are numbered. Every act of kindness or unselfishness on my part, also, stands out like a golden letter or a white stone, and gives me unspeakable comfort. At the last judgment, and in eternity following, we shall have very different but just as real bodies as those that we possessed in the flesh. The dead at the last trump will rise clothed in them, and at that time the souls in paradise will receive them also."

"I wonder," thought Ayrault, "on which hand we shall be placed in that last day."

"The classification is now going on," said the spirit, answering his thought, "and I know that in the final judgment each individual will range himself automatically on his proper side."

"Do tell me," said Ayrault, "how you were able to answer my thought."

"I see the vibrations of the grey matter of your brain as plainly as the movements of your lips"; in

fact, I see the thoughts in the embryonic state taking shape."

When their meal was ready they sat down, Ayrault placing the spirit on his right, with Cortlandt on his left, and having Bearwarden opposite. On this occasion their chief had given them a particularly good dinner, but the spirit took only a slice of meat and a glass of claret.

"Won't you tell us the story of your life," said Ayrault to the spirit, "and your experiences since your death? They would be of tremendous interest to us."

"I was a bishop in one of the Atlantic States," replied the spirit gravely, "and died shortly before the civil war. People came from other cities to hear my sermons, and the biographical writers have honoured my memory by saying that I was a great man. I was contemporaneous with Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. Shortly after I reached threescore and ten, according to earthly years, I caught what I considered only a slight cold, for I had always had good health, but it became pneumonia. My friends, children, and grandchildren came to see me, and all seemed going well, when, without warning, my physician

told me I had but a few hours to live. I could scarcely believe my ears; and though, as a Churchman, I had ministered to others and had always tried to lead a good life, I was greatly shocked. I suddenly remembered all the things I had left undone and all the things I intended to do, and the old saying, `Hell is paved with good intentions,' crossed my mind very forcibly. In less than an hour I saw the physician was right; I grew weaker and my pulse fluttered, but my mind remained clear. I prayed to my Creator with all my soul, `O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength, before I go hence, and be no more seen.' As if for an answer, the thought crossed my brain, `Set thine house in order, for thou shalt not live, but die.' I then called my children and made disposition of such of my property and personal effects as were not covered by my will. I also gave to each the advice that my experience had shown me he or she needed. Then came another wave of remorse and regret, and again an intense longing to pray; but along with the thought of sins and neglected duties came also the memory of the honest efforts I had made to obey my conscience, and these were like rifts of sunshine during a storm. These thoughts, and the blessed promises of religion I had so often preached in the churches of my diocese, were an indescribable comfort, and saved me from the depths of blank despair. Finally my breathing became laboured, I had sharp spasms of pain, and my pulse almost stopped. I felt that I was dying, and my sight grew dim. The crisis and climax of life were at hand. `Oh!' I thought, with the philosophers and sages, `is it to this end I lived? The flower appears, briefly blooms amid troublous toil, and is gone; my body returns to its primordial dust, and my works are buried in oblivion. The paths of life and glory lead but to the grave.' My soul was filled with conflicting thoughts, and for a moment even my faith seemed at a low ebb. I could hear my children's stifled sobs, and my darling wife shed silent tears. The thought of parting from them gave me the bitterest wrench. With my fleeting breath I gasped these words, `That mercy I showed others, that show thou me.' The darkened room grew darker, and after that I died. In my sleep I seemed to dream. All about were refined and heavenly flowers, while the most delightful sounds and perfumes filled the air. Gradually the vision became more distinct, and I experienced an indescribable feeling of peace and repose. I passed through fields and scenes I had never seen before, while every place was filled with an all-pervading light. Sometimes I seemed to be miles in air; countless suns and their planets shone, and dazzled my eyes, while no bird-of-paradise was as happy or free as I. Gradually it came to me that I was awake, and that it was no dream. Then I remembered my last moments, and perceived that I had died. Death had brought freedom, my work in the flesh was ended, I was indeed alive.

"`O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?' In my dying moments I had forgotten what I had so often preached — `Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die.' In a moment my life lay before me like a valley or an open page. All along its paths and waysides I saw the little seeds of word and deed that I had sown extending and bearing fruit forever for good or evil. I then saw things as they were, and realized the faultiness of my former conclusions, based as they had been on the incomplete knowledge obtained through embryonic senses. I also saw the Divine

purpose in life as the design in a piece of tapestry, whereas before I had seen but the wrong side. It is not till we have lost the life in the flesh that we realize its dignity and value, for every hour gives us opportunities of helping or elevating some human being — it may be ourselves — of doing something in His service.

"Now that time is past, the books are closed, and we can do nothing further ourselves to alter our status for eternity, however much we may wish to. It is on this account, and not merely to save you from death, which in itself is nothing, that I now tell you to run to the Callisto, seal the doors hermetically, and come not forth till a sudden rush of air that you will see on the trees has passed. A gust in which even birds drop dead, if they are unable to escape, will be here when you reach safety. Do not delay to take this food, and eat none of it when you return, for it will be filled with poisonous germs."

"How can we find you? " asked Ayrault, grasping his hand. "You must not leave us till we know how we can see you again."

"Think hard and steadfastly of me, you three," replied the spirit, "if you want me, and I shall feel your thought"; saying which, he vanished before their eyes, and the three friends ran to the Callisto.

3.3. DOUBTS AND PHILOSOPHY.

On reaching it, they climbed the ladder leading to the second-story opening, and entering through this, they closed the door, screwing it tightly in place.

"Now," said Cortlandt, "we can see what changes, if any, this wonderful gust will effect."

"He made no strictures on our senses, such as they are," said Bearwarden, "but implied that evolution would be carried much further in us, from which I suppose we may infer that it has not yet gone far. I wish we had recorked those brandy peaches, for now they will be filled with poisonous germs. I wonder if our shady friend could not tell us of an antiseptic with which they might be treated?"

"Those fellows," thought Ayrault, who had climbed to the dome, from which he had an extended

view, would jeer at an angel, while the deference they showed the spirit seems, as usual, to have been merely superficial."

"Let us note," said Cortlandt, "that the spirit thermometer outside has fallen several degrees since we entered, though, from the time taken, I should not say that the sudden change would be one of temperature."

Just then they saw a number of birds, which had been resting in a clump of trees, take flight suddenly; but they fell to the ground before they had risen far, and were dashed to pieces. In another moment the trees began to bend and sway before the storm; and as they gazed, the colour of the leaves turned from green and purple to orange and red. The wind blew off many of these, and they were carried along by the gusts, or fluttered to the ground, which was soon strewed with them. It was a typical autumnal scene. Presently the wind shifted, and this was followed by a cold shower of rain.

"I think the worst is over," said Bearwarden. "The Sailor's Guide says:

`When the rain's before the wind,
Halliards, sheets, and braces mind;
When the wind's before the rain,
Soon you can make sail again.'

Doubtless that will hold good here."

This proved to be correct; and, after a repetition of the precautions they had taken on their arrival on the planet in regard to the inhalability of the air, they again sallied forth. They left their magazine shot-guns, taking instead the double-barrelled kind, on account of the rapidity with which this enabled them to fire the second barrel after the first, and threw away the water that had collected in the bucket, out of respect to the spirit's warning. They noticed a pungent odour, and decided to remain on high ground, since they had observed that the birds, in their effort to escape, had flown almost vertically into the air. On reaching the grove in which they had seen the storm, they found their table and everything on it exactly as they had left it. Bearwarden threw out the brandy peaches on the ground, exclaiming that it was a shame to lose such good preserves, and they proceeded on their walk. They passed hundreds of dead birds, and on reaching the edge of the toadstool valley were not a little surprised to find that every toadstool had disappeared.

"I wonder," said the doctor, "if there can be any connection between the phenomenon of the disappearance of those toadstools and the death of the birds? We could easily discover it if they had eaten them, or if in any other way the plants could have entered their bodies; but I see no way in which that can have happened."

Resolving to investigate carefully any other fungi they might see, they resumed their march. The cold, distant-looking sun, apparently about the size of an orange, was near the horizon. Saturn's rotation on its axis occupying only ten hours and fourteen minutes, being but a few minutes longer than Jupiter's, they knew it would soon be night. Finding a place on a range of hills sheltered by rocks and a clump of trees of the evergreen species, they arranged themselves as comfortably as possible, ate some of the sandwiches they had brought, lighted their pipes, and watched the dying day. Here were no fire-flies to light the darkening minutes, nor singing flowers to lull them to sleep with their song but six of the eight moons, each at a different phase, and with varied brightness, bathed the landscape in their pale, cold rays; while far above them, like a huge rainbow,

stretched the great rings in effulgent sheets, reaching thousands of miles into space, and flooded everything with their silvery light.

"How poor a place compared with this," they thought to themselves, "is our world!" and Ayrault wished that his soul was already free; while the dead leaves rustling in the gentle breeze, and the nightwinds, sighing among the trees, seemed to echo his thought. Far above their heads, and in the vastness of space, the well-known stars and constellations, notwithstanding the enormous distance they had now come, looked absolutely unchanged, and seemed to them emblematic of tranquillity and eternal repose. The days were changed by their shortness, and by the apparent loss of power in the sun; and the nights, as if in compensation, were magnificently illuminated by the numerous moons and splendid rings, though neither rings nor satellites shone with as strong a light as the terrestrial moon. But in nothing outside of the solar system was there any change; and could AEneas's Palinurus, or one of Philip of Macedon's shepherds, be brought to life here, he would see exactly the same stars in the same positions; and, did he not know of his own death or of the lapse of

time, he might suppose, so far as the heavens were affected, that he had but fallen asleep, or had just closed his eyes.

"I have always regretted," said Cortlandt, "that I was not born a thousand years later."

"Were it not," added Ayrault, "that our earth is the vestibule to space, and for the opportunities it opens, I should rather never have lived, for life in itself is unsatisfying."

"You fellows are too indefinite and abstract for me," said Bearwarden. "I like something tangible and concrete. The utilitarianism of the twentieth century, by which I live, paradoxical though it may seem, would be out of place in space, unless we can colonize the other planets, and improve their arrangements and axes."

Mixed with Ayrault's philosophical and metaphysical thoughts were the memories of his sweetheart at Vassar, and he longed, more than his companions, for the spirit's return, that he might ask him if perchance he could tell him aught of her, and whether her thoughts were then of him.

Finally, worn out by the fatigue and excitement of the day, they set the protection-wires, more from

force of habit than because they feared molestation and, rolling themselves in their blankets — for the night was cold — were soon fast asleep; Ayrault's last thought having been of his fiancee, Cortlandt's of the question he wished to ask the spirit, and Bearwarden's of the progress of his Company in the work of straightening the terrestrial axis. Thus they slept seven hundred and ninety million miles beyond their earth's orbit, and more than eight hundred million from the place where the earth was then. While they lay unconscious, the clouds above them froze, and before morning there was a fall of snow that covered the ground and them as they lay upon it. Soon three white mounds were all that marked their presence, and the cranes and eagles, rising from their roosts in response to the coming day, looked unconcernedly at all that was human that they had ever seen. Finally, wakened by the resounding cries of these birds, Bearwarden and Cortlandt arose, and meeting Ayrault, who had already risen, mistook the snowy form before them for the spirit, and thinking the dead bishop had revisited them, they were preparing to welcome him, and to propound the questions they had formulated, when Ayrault's familiar voice showed them their mistake.

"Seeing your white figures," said he, "rise apparently in response to those loud calls, reminded me of what the spirit told us of the last day, and of the awakening and resurrection of the dead."

The scene was indeed weird. The east, already streaked with the rays of the rising far-away sun, and the pale moons nearing the horizon in the west, seemed connected by the huge bow of light. The snow on the dark evergreens produced a contrast of colour, while the other trees raised their almost bare and whitened branches against the sky, as though in suplication to the mysterious rings, which cast their light upon them and on the ground. As they gazed, however, the rings became grey, the moons disappeared, and another day began. Feeling sure the snow must have cleared the air of any deleterious substances it contained the day before, they descended into the neighbouring valley, which, having a southerly exposure, was warm in comparison with the hills. As they walked they disturbed a number of small rodents, which quickly ran away and disappeared in their holes.

"Though we have seen none of the huge creatures here," said Cortlandt, "that were so plentiful on Jupiter, these burrowers belong to a distinctly higher scale than those we found there, from which I take it we may infer that the evolution of the animal kingdom has advanced further on this planet than on Jupiter, which is just what we have a right to expect; for Saturn, in addition to being the smaller and therefore more matured of the two, has doubtless had a longer individual existence, being the farther from the sun."

Notwithstanding the cold of the night, the flowers, especially the lilies, were as beautiful as ever, which surprised them not a little, until, on examining them closely, they found that the sterns and veins in the leaves were fluted, and therefore elastic, so that, should the sap freeze, it could expand without bursting the cells, thereby enabling the flowers to withstand a short frost. They noticed that many of the curiously shaped birds they saw at a distance from time to time were able to move with great rapidity along the ground, and had about concluded that they must have four legs, being similar to winged squirrels, when a long, low quadruped, about

twenty-five feet from nostrils to tail, which they were endeavouring to stalk, suddenly spread two pairs of wings, flapping the four at once, and then soared off at great speed.

"I hope we can get one of those, or at least his photograph," said Cortlandt.

"If they go in pairs," said Bearwarden, "we may find the companion near."

At that moment another great winged lizard, considerably larger than the first, rose with a snort, not twenty yards on their left. Cortlandt, who was a good shot with a gun at short range, immediately raised his twelve-bore and fired both barrels at the monster; but the double-B shots had no more disabling effect than if they had been number eights. They, however, excited the creature's ire; for, sweeping around quickly, it made straight for Cortlandt, breathing at him when near, and almost overpowering the three men with the malodorous, poisonous cloud it exhaled. Instantly Bearwarden fired several revolver bullets down its throat, while Ayrault pulled both barrels almost simultaneously, with the muzzles but a few inches from its side. In this case the initial velocity of the heavy buckshot was so great, and

they were still so close together, that they penetrated the leathery hide, tearing a large hole. With a roar the wounded monster beat a retreat, first almost prostrating them with another blast of its awful breath.

"It would take a stronger light than we get here," said Bearwarden, "to impress a negative through that haze. I think," he continued, "I know a trick that will do the business, if we see any more of these dragons." Saying which, he withdrew the cartridges from his gun, and with his hunting-knife cut the tough paper shell nearly through between the wads separating the powder from the shot, drawing his knife entirely around.

"Now," said he, "when I fire those, the entire forward end of the cartridge will go out, keeping the fifteen buckshot together like a slug, and with such penetration that it will go through a two-inch plank. It is a trick I learned from hunters, and, unless your guns are choke-bore, in which case it might burst the barrel, I advise you to follow suit."

Finding they had brought straight-bored guns, they arranged their cartridges similarly, and set out in the direction in which the winged lizards or dragons had gone.

3.4. A PROVIDENTIAL INTERVENTION.

The valley narrowed as they advanced, the banks rising gently on both sides. Both dragons had flown straight to a grove of tall, spreading trees. On coming near to this, they noticed a faint smell like that of the dragon, and also like the trace they found in the air on leaving the Callisto the day before, after they had sought safety within it. Soon it almost knocked them down.

"We must get to windward," said Cortlandt. "I already feel faint, and believe those dragons could kill a man by breathing on him."

Accordingly, they skirted around the grove, and having made a quarter circle — for they did not wish the dragons to wind them — again drew nearer. Tree after tree was passed, and finally they saw an open space twelve or fifteen acres in area at the

centre of the grove, when they were arrested by a curious sound of munching. Peering among the trunks of the huge trees, they advanced cautiously, but stopped aghast. In the opening were at least a hundred dragons devouring the toadstools with which the ground was covered. Many of them were thirty to forty feet long, with huge and terribly long, sharp claws, and jaws armed with gleaming batteries of teeth. Though they had evidently lungs, and the claws and mouth of an animal, they reminded the observers in many respects of insects enormously exaggerated, for their wings, composed of a sort of transparent scale, were small, and moved, as they had already seen, at far greater speed than those of a bird. Their projecting eyes were also set rigidly in their heads instead of turning, and consisted of a number of flat surfaces or facets, like a fly's eye, so that they could see backward and all around, each facet seeing anything the rays from which came at right angles to its surface. This beautiful grove was doubtless their feeding-ground, and, as such, was likely to be visited by many more. Concluding it would be wise to let their wounded game escape, the three men were about to retreat, having found it difficult to breathe the air even at that distance from the monsters, when the wounded dragon that they had observed moving about in a very restless manner, and evidently suffering a good deal from the effect of its wounds, espied them, and, with a roar that made the echoes ring, started towards them slowly along the ground, followed by the entire herd, the nearer of which now also saw them. Seeing that their lives were in danger, the hunters quickly regained the open, and then stretched their legs against the wind. The dragons came through the trees on the ground, and then, raising themselves by their wings, the whole swarm, snorting, and darkening the air with their deadly breath, made straight for the men, who by comparison looked like Lilliputians. With the slug from his right barrel Bearwarden ended the wounded dragon's career by shooting him through the head, and with his left laid low the one following. Ayrault also killed two huge monsters, and Cortlandt killed one and wounded another. Their supply of prepared cartridges was then exhausted, and they fell back on their revolvers and ineffective spreading shot. Resolved to sell their lives dearly, they retreated, keeping their backs to the wind, with the poisonous dragons in front. But the breeze was very slight, and they were being rapidly blinded and asphyxiated by the loathsome fumes, and deafened by the hideous roaring and snapping of the dragons' jaws. Realizing that they could not much longer reply to the diabolical host with lead, they believed their last hour had come, when the ground on which they were making their last stand shook, there was a rending of rocks and a rush of imprisoned steam that drowned even the dragons' roar, and they were separated from them by a long fissure and a wall of smoke and vapour. Struggling back from the edge of the chasm, they fell upon the ground, and then for the first time fully realized that the earthquake had saved them, for the dragons could not come across the opening, and would not venture to fly through the smoke and steam. When they recovered somewhat from the shock, they cut a number of cartridges in the same way that they had prepared those that had done them such good service, and kept one barrel of each gun loaded with that kind.

We may thank Providence," said Bearwarden,

for that escape. I hope we shall have no more such close calls."

With a parting glance at the chasm that had saved their lives, and from which a cloud still arose, they turned slightly to the right of their former course and climbed the gently rising bank. When near the top, being tired of their exciting experiences, they sat down to rest. The ground all about them was covered with mushrooms, white on top and pink underneath.

"This is a wonderful place for fungi," said Ayrault. "Here, doubtless, we shall be safe from the dragons, for they seemed to prefer the toadstools." As he lay on the ground he watched one particular mushroom that seemed to grow before his eyes. Suddenly, as he looked, it vanished. Dumfounded at this unmistakable manifestation of the phenomenon they thought they had seen on landing, he called his companions, and, choosing another mushroom, the three watched it closely. Presently, without the least noise or commotion, that also disappeared, leaving no trace, and the same fate befell a number of others. At a certain point of their development they vanished as completely as a bubble of air coming to the surface

of water, except that they caused no ripple, leaving merely a small depression where they had stood.

"Well," said Bearwarden, "in all my travels I never have seen anything like this. If I were at a sleight-of-hand performance, and the prestidigitateur, after doing that, asked for my theory, I should say, `I give it up.' How is it with you, doctor?" he asked, addressing Cortlandt.

"There must be an explanation," replied Cortlandt, "only we do not know the natural law to which the phenomenon is subject, having had no experience with it on earth. We know that all substances can be converted into gases, and that all gases can be reduced to liquids, and even solids, by the application of pressure and cold. If there is any way by which the visible substance of these fungi can be converted into its invisible gases, as water into oxygen and hydrogen, what we have seen can be logically explained. Perhaps, favoured by some affinity of the atmosphere, its constituent parts are broken up and become gases at this barometric pressure and temperature. We must ask the spirit, if he visits us again."

"I wish he would," said Ayrault; "there are lots of things I should like to ask him."

"Presidents of corporations and other chairmen," said Bearwarden, "are not usually superstitious, and I, of course, take no stock in the supernatural; but somehow I have a well-formed idea that our friend the bishop, with the great power of his mind over matter, had a hand in that earthquake. He seems to have an exalted idea of our importance, and may be exerting himself to make things pleasant."

At this point the sun sank below the horizon, and they found themselves confronted with night.

"Dear, dear!" said Bearwarden, "and we haven't a crumb to eat. I'll stand the drinks and the pipes," he continued, passing around his ubiquitous flask and tobacco-pouch.

"If I played such pranks with my interior on earth," said Cortlandt, helping himself to both, "as I do on this planet, it would give me no end of trouble, but here I seem to have the digestion of an ostrich."

So they sat and smoked for an hour, till the stars twinkled and the rings shone in their glory.

"Well," said Ayrault, finally, "since we have

nothing but motions to lay on the table, I move we adjourn."

"The only motion I shall make," said Cortlandt, who was already undressed, "will be that of getting into bed," saying which, he rolled himself in his blanket and soon was fast asleep.

Having decided that, on account of the proximity of the dragons, a man must in any event be on the watch, they did not set the protection-wires. From the shortness of the nights, they divided them into only two watches of from two hours to two and a half each, so that, even when constant watch duty was necessary, each man had one full night's sleep in three. On this occasion Ayrault and Cortlandt were the watchers, Cortlandt having the morning and Ayrault the evening watch. Many curious quadruped birds, about the size of large bears, and similar in shape, having bear-shaped heads, and several creatures that looked like the dragons, flew about them in the moonlight; but neither watcher fired a shot, as the creatures showed no desire to make an attack. All these species seemed to belong to the owl or bat tribe, for they roamed abroad at night.

3.5. AYRAULT'S VISION.

When Ayrault's watch was ended, he roused Cortlandt, who took his place, and feeling a desire for solitude and for a last long look at the earth, he crossed the top of the ridge on the slope of which they had camped, and lay down on the farther side. The South wind in the upper air rushed along in the mighty whirl, occasionally carrying filmy clouds across the faces of the moons; but about Ayrault all was still, and he felt a quiet and serene repose. He had every intention of remaining awake, and was pondering on the steadfastness of the human heart and the constancy of love, when his meditations began to wander, and, with his last thoughts on Sylvia, he fell asleep. Not a branch moved, nor did a leaf fall, yet before Ayrault's, sleeping eyes a strange scene was enacted. A figure in white came near and

stood before him, and he recognized in it one Violet Slade, a very attractive girl to whom he had been attentive in his college days. She was at that time just eighteen, and people believed that she loved him, but for some reason, he knew not why, he had not proposed.

"I thought you had died," he said, as she gazed at him, "but you are now looking better than ever."

"From the world's point of view I am dead," she replied. "I died and was buried. It is therefore permissible that I should show you the truth. You never believed I loved you. I have wished earnestly to see you, and to have you know that I did."

"I did you an injustice," Ayrault answered, perceiving all that was in her heart. "Could mortals but see as spirits do, there would be no misunderstandings."

"I am so glad to see you," she continued, "and to know you are well. Had you not come here, we could probably not have met until after your death; for I shall not be sufficiently advanced to return to earth for a long time, though my greatest solace while there was my religion, which is all that brought me here. We, however, know that as our

capacity for true happiness increases we shall be happier, and that after the resurrection there will be no more tears. Farewell," she whispered, while her eyes were filled with love.

Ayrault's sleep was then undisturbed for some time, when suddenly an angel, wreathed in light, appeared before him and spoke these words: "He that walked with Adam and talked with Moses has sent me to guard you while you sleep. No plague or fever, wild beast or earthquake, can molest you, for you are equally protected from the most powerful monster and the most insidious disease-germ. `Blessed is the man whose offences are covered and whose sins are forgiven.' Sleep on, therefore, and be refreshed, for the body must have rest."

"A man may rest indeed," replied Ayrault, "when he has a guardian angel. I had the most unbounded faith in your existence before I saw you, and believe and know that you or others have often shielded me from danger and saved my life. Why am I worthy of so much care?"

"`Whoso dwelleth under the defence of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty,'" answered the angel, and thereupon he

became invisible, a diffused light taking his place. Shortly afterwards this paled and completely vanished.

"Not only am I in paradise," thought Ayrault; "I believe I am also in the seventh heaven. Would I might hear such words again!"

A group of lilies then appeared before the sleeper's eyes. In the midst was one lily far larger than the rest, and of a dazzling white. This spoke in a gentle voice, but with the tones of a trombone:

"Thy thoughts and acts are a pleasure to me. Thou hast raised no idols within thy heart, and thy faith is as incense before me. Thy name is now in the Book of Life. Continue as thou hast begun, and thou shalt live and reign forever."

Hereupon the earth shook, and Ayrault was awakened. Great boulders were rolling and crashing down the slope about him, while the dawn was already in the east.

"My mortal eyes and senses are keener here while I sleep than when I wake," he thought, as he looked about him, "for spirits, unable to affect me while waking, have made themselves felt in my more sensitive

state while I was asleep. Nevertheless, this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

"The boulders were still in motion when I opened my eyes," he mused; "can it be that there is hereabouts such a flower as in my dreams I seemed to see?" and looking beyond where his head had lain, he beheld the identical lily surrounded by the group that his closed eyes had already seen. Thereupon he uncovered his head and departed quickly. Crossing the divide, he descended to camp, where he found Cortlandt in deep thought.

"I cannot get over the dreams," said the doctor, "I had in the first part of the night. Notwithstanding yesterday's excitement and fatigue, my sleep was most disturbed, and I was visited by visions of my wife, who died long ago. She warned me against skepticism, and seemed much distressed at my present spiritual state."

"I," said Bearwarden, who had been out early, and had succeeded in bringing in half a dozen birds, "was so disturbed I could not sleep. It seemed to me as though half the men I have ever known came and warned me against agnosticism and my materialis

tic tendencies. They kept repeating, `You are losing the reality for the shadow.'"

"I am convinced," said Ayrault, "that they were not altogether dreams, or, if dreams indeed, that they were superinduced by a higher will. We know that angels have often appeared to men in the past. May it not be that, as our appreciativeness increases, these communications will recur?" Thereupon he related his own experiences.

"The thing that surprised me," said Cortlandt, as they finished breakfast, "was the extraordinary realism of the scene. We must see if our visions return on anything but an empty stomach."

3.6. A GREAT VOID AND A GREAT LONGING.

Resuming their march, the travellers proceeded along the circumference of a circle having a radius of about three miles, with the Callisto in the centre. In crossing soft places they observed foot-prints forming in the earth all around them. The impressions were of all sizes, and ceased when they reached rising or hard ground, only to reappear in the swamps, regulating their speed by that of the travellers. The three men were greatly surprised at this.

"You may observe," said Cortlandt, "that the surface of the impression is depressed as you watch it, as though by a weight, and you can see, and even hear, the water being squeezed out, though whatever is doing it is entirely invisible. They must be made by spirits sufficiently advanced to

have weight, but not advanced enough to make themselves visible."

Moved by a species of vandalism, Bearwarden raised his twelve-bore, and fired an ordinary cartridge that he had not prepared for the dragons, at the space directly over the nearest forming prints. There was a brilliant display of prismatic colours, as in a rainbow, and though the impressions already made remained, no new ones were formed.

"Now you have done it!" said Cortlandt. "I hoped to be able to investigate this further."

"We shall doubtless see other and perhaps more wonderful things," replied Bearwarden. "I must say this gives me an uncanny feeling."

When they had completed a little over half their circle, they came upon another of the groves with which Saturn seemed to abound, at the edge of which, in a side-hill, was a cave, the entrance of which was composed of rocky masses that had apparently fallen together, the floor being but little higher than the surface outside. The arched roof of the vestibule was rendered watertight by the soil that had formed upon it, which again was overgrown by vines and bushes."

"This," said Bearwarden, "will be a good place to camp, for the cave will protect us from dragons, unless they should take a notion to breathe at us from the outside, and it will keep us dry in case of rain. To-morrow we can start with this as a centre, and make another circuit."

"We can explore Saturn on foot," said Cortlandt, and far more thoroughly than Jupiter, on account of its comparative freedom from monsters. Not even the dragons can trouble us, unless we meet them in large numbers."

Thereupon they set about getting fuel for their fire. Besides collecting some of the dead wood that was lying all about, they split up a number of resinous pine and fir trees with explosive bullets from their revolvers, so that soon they not only had a roaring fire, but filled the back part of the cave with logs to dry, in case they should camp there again at some later day. Neither Cortlandt nor Bearwarden felt much like sleeping, and so, after finishing the birds the president had brought down that morning, they persuaded Ayrault to sit up and smoke with them. Wrapping themselves in their blankets — for there was a chill in the air — they sat about the camp-fire

they had built in the mouth of the cave. Two moons that were at the full rose rapidly in the clear, cold sky. On account of their distance from the sun, they were less bright than the terrestrial moon, but they shone with a marvellously pure pale light. The larger contained the exact features of a man. There was the somewhat aquiline nose, a clear-cut and expressive mouth, and large, handsome eyes, which were shaded by well-marked eyebrows. The whole face was very striking, but was a personification of the most intense grief. The expression was indeed sadder than that of any face they had ever seen. The other contained the profile of a surpassingly beautiful young woman. The handsome eyes, shaded by lashes, looked straight ahead. The nose was perfect, and the ear small, while the hair was artistically arranged at the top and back of the head. This moon also reflected a pure white ray. The former appeared about once and a quarter, the latter but three quarters, the size of the terrestrial moon, and the travellers immediately recognized them by their sizes and relative positions as Tethys and Dione, discovered by J. D. Cassini in March, 1684. The sad face was turned slightly towards that of its companion, and it looked as if some tale of the human heart, some romance, had been engraved and preserved for all time on the features of these dead bodies, as they silently swung in their orbits forever and anon were side by side.

"In all the ages," said Cortlandt, "that these moons have wandered with Saturn about the sun, and with the solar system in its journey through space, they can never have gazed upon the scene they now behold, for we may be convinced that no mortal man has been here before."

"We may say," said Ayrault, "that they see in our bodies a type of the source from which come all the spiritual beings that are here."

"If, as the writers of mythology supposed," replied Cortlandt, "inanimate objects were endowed with senses, these moons would doubtless be unable to perceive the spiritual beings here; for the satellites, being material, should, to be consistent, have only those senses possessed by ourselves, so that to them this planet would ordinarily appear deserted."

"I shall be glad," said Bearwarden, gloomily, when those moons wane and are succeeded by their fellows, for one would give me an attack of the

blues, while the other would subject me to the inconvenience of falling in love."

As he spoke, the upper branches of the trees in the grove began to sway as a cold gust from the north sighed among them. "Lose no more opportunities," it seemed to cry, "for life is short and uncertain. Soon you will all be colder than I, and your future, still as easily moulded as clay, will be set as Marpesian marble, more fixed than the hardest rock."

"Paradise," said Cortlandt, "contains sights and sounds that might, I should think, arouse sad reminiscences without the aid of the waters of Lethe, unless the joy of its souls in their new resources and the sense of forgiveness outweigh all else."

With a parting look at the refined, silvery moon, and its sorrow-laden companion, they retired to the sheltering cave, piled up the fire, and talked on for an hour.

"I do not see how it is," said Bearwarden, "that these moons, considering their distance from the sun, and the consequently small amount of light they receive, are so bright."

A body's brightness in reflecting light," re

plied Cortlandt, "depends as much on the colour and composition of its own surface as on the amount it receives. It is conceivable that these moons, if placed at the earth's distance from the sun, would be far brighter than our moon, and that our familiar satellite, if removed to Saturn, would seem very dim. We know how much more brilliant a mountain in the sunlight is when clad in snow than when its sides are bare. These moons evidently reflect a large proportion of the light they receive."

When they came out shortly after midnight the girl's-face moon had already set, leaving a dark and dreary void in the part of the sky it had so ideally filled. The inexpressibly sad satellite (on account of its shorter distance and more rapid rate of revolution) was still above the horizon, and, being slightly tilted, had a more melancholy, heart-broken look than before. While they gazed sadly at the emptiness left by Dione, Cortlandt saw Ayrault's expression change, and, not clearly perceiving its cause, said, wishing to cheer him: "Never mind, Dick; to-morrow night we shall see it again."

"Ah, prosaic reasoner," retorted Bearwarden, who saw that this, like so many other things, had re

minded Ayrault of Sylvia, "that is but small consolation for having lost it now, though I suppose our lot is not so hard as if we were never to see it again. In that moon's face I find the realization of my fancied ideal woman; while that sad one yonder seems as though some celestial lover, in search of his fate, had become enamoured of her, and tried in vain to win her, and the grief in his mind had impressed itself on the then molten face of a satellite to be the monument throughout eternity of love and a broken heart. If the spirits and souls of the departed have any command of matter, why may not their intensest thoughts engrave themselves on a moon that, when dead and frozen, may reflect and shine as they did, while immersed in the depths of space? At first Dione bored me; now I should greatly like to see her again."

"History repeats itself," replied Cortlandt, "and the same phases of life recur. It is we that are in a changed receptive mood. The change that seems to be in them is in reality in us. Remain as you are now, and Dione will give you the same pleasure tomorrow that she gave to-day."

To Ayrault this meant more than the mere setting

to rise again of a heavenly body. The perfume of a flower, the sighing of the wind, suggesting some harmony or song, a full or crescent moon, recalled thoughts and associations of Sylvia. Everything seemed to bring out memory, and he realized the utter inability of absence to cure the heart of love. "If Sylvia should pass from my life as that moon has left my vision," his thoughts continued, "existence would be but sadness and memory would be its cause, for the most beautiful sounds entail sorrow; the most beautiful sights, intense pain. "Ah," he went on with a trace of bitterness, while his friends fell asleep in the cave, "I might better have remained in love with science; for whose studies Nature, which is but a form of God, in the right spirit, is not dependent for his joy or despair on the whims of a girl. She, of course, sees many others, and, being only twenty, may forget me. Must I content myself with philosophical rules and mathematical formulae, when she, whose changefulness I may find greater than the winds that sigh over me, now loves me no longer? O love, which makes us miserable when we feel it, and more miserable still when it is gone!"

He strung a number of copper wires at different degrees of tension between two trees, and listened to the wind as it ranged up and down on this improvised AEolian harp. It gradually ran into a regular refrain, which became more and more like words. Ayrault was puzzled, and then amazed. There could be no doubt about it. "You should be happy," it kept repeating — "you should be happy," in soft musical tones.

"I know I should," replied Ayrault, finally recognizing the voice of Violet Slade in the song of the wind, and I cannot understand why I am not. Tell me, is this paradise, Violet, or is it not rather purgatory?"

The notes ranged up and down again, and he perceived that she was causing the wind to blow as she desired — in other words, she was making it play upon his harp.

"That depends on the individual," she replied.

It is rather sheol, the place of departed spirits. Those whose consciences made them happy on earth are in paradise here; while those good enough to reach heaven at last, but in whom some dross remains, are further refined in spirit, and to them it is

purgatory. Those who are in love can be happy in but one way while their love lasts. What is happiness, anyway?"

"It is the state in which desires are satisfied, my fair Violet," answered Ayrault.

"Say, rather, the state in which desire coincides with duty," replied the song. "Self-sacrifice for others gives the truest joy; being with the object of one's love, the next. You never believed that I loved you. I dissembled well; but you will see for yourself some day, as clearly as I see your love for another now."

"Yes," replied Ayrault, sadly, "I am in love. I have no reason to believe there is cause for my unrest, and, considering every thing, I should be happy as man can be; yet, mirabile dictu, I am in — hades, in the very depths!"

"Your beloved is beyond my vision; your heart is all I can see. Yet I am convinced she will not forget you. I am sure she loves you still."

"I have always believed in homoeopathy to the extent of the similia similibus curantur, Violet, and it is certain that where nothing else will cure a man of love for one woman, his love for another will.

You can see how I love Sylvia, but you have never seemed so sweet to me as to-day."

"It is a sacrilege, my friend, to speak so to me now. You are done with me forever. I am but a disembodied spirit, and escaped hades by the grace of the Omnipotent, rather than by virtue of any good I did on earth. So far as any elasticity is left in my opportunities, I am dead as yon moon. You have still the gift that but one can give. Within your animal body you hold an immortal soul. It is pliable as wax; you can mould it by your will. As you shape that soul, so will your future be. It is the ark that can traverse the flood. Raise it, and it will raise you. It is all there is in yourself. Preserve that gift, and when you die you will, I hope, start on a plane many thousands of years in advance of me. There should be no more comparison between us than between a person with all his senses and one that is deaf and blind. Though you are a layman, you should, with your faith and frame of mind, soon be but little behind our spiritual bishop."

"I supposed after death a man had rest. Is he, then, a bishop still?"

"The progress, as he told you, is largely on the

old lines. As he stirred men's hearts on earth, he will stir their souls in heaven; and this is no irksome or unwelcome work."

"You say he will do this in heaven. Is he, then, not there yet?"

"He was not far from heaven on earth, yet technically none of us can be in heaven till after the general resurrection. Then, as we knew on earth, we shall receive bodies, though, as yet, concerning their exact nature we know but little more than then. We are all in sheol — the just in purgatory and paradise, the unjust in hell."

"Since you are still in purgatory, are you unhappy?"

"No, our state is very happy. All physical pain is past, and can never be felt again. We know that our evil desires are overcome, and that their imprints are being gradually erased. I occasionally shed an intangible tear, yet for most of those who strove to obey their consciences, purgatory, when essential, though occasionally giving us a bitter twinge, is a joy-producing state. Not all the glories imaginable or unimaginable could make us happy, were our consciences ill at ease. I have advanced slowly, yet

some things are given us at once. After I realized I had irrevocably lost your love, though for a time I had hoped to regain it, I became very restless; earth seemed a prison, and I looked forward to death as my deliverer. I bore you no malice; you had never especially tried to win me; the infatuation — that of a girl of eighteen — had been all on my side. I lived five sad and lonely years, although, as you know, I had much attention. People thought me cold and heartless. How could I have a heart, having failed to win yours, and mine being broken? Having lost the only man I loved, I knew no one else could replace him, and I was not the kind to marry for pique. People thought me handsome, but I felt myself aged when you ceased to call. Perhaps when you and she who holds all your love come to sheol, she may spare you to me a little, for as a spirit my every thought is known; or perhaps after the resurrection, when I, too, can leave this planet, we shall all soar through space together, and we can study the stars as of old."

"Your voice is a symphony, sweetest Violet, and I love to hear your words. Ah, would you could once more return to earth, or that I were an ethereal spirit, that we might commune face to face! I would

follow you from one end of Shadowland to the other. Of what use is life to me, with distractions that draw my thoughts to earth as gravitation drew my body? I wish I were a shade."

"You are talking for effect, Dick — which is useless here, for I see how utterly you are in love."

"I am in love, Violet; and though, as I said, I have no reason to doubt Sylvia's steadfastness and constancy, I am very unhappy. I have always heard that time is a balsam that cures all ills, yet I become more wretched every day."

"Do all you can to preserve that love, and it will bring you joy all your life. Your happiness is my happiness. What distresses you, distresses me."

The tones here grew fainter and seemed about to cease.

"Before you leave me," cried Ayrault, "tell me how and when I may see or hear you again."

"While you remain on this planet, I shall be near; but beyond Saturn I cannot go."

"Yet tell me, Violet, how I may see you? My love unattained, you perceive, makes me wretched, while you always gave me calm and peace. If I may

not kiss the hand I almost asked might be mine, let me have but a glance from your sweet eyes, which will comfort me so much now."

"If you break the ice in the pool behind you, you shall see me till the frame melts."

After this the silence was broken only by the sighing of the wind in the trees. The pool had suddenly become covered with ice several inches thick. Taking an axe, Ayrault hewed out a parallelogram about three feet by four and set it on end against the bank. The cold grey of morning was already colouring the east, and in the growing light Ayrault beheld a vision of Violet within the ice. The face was at about three fourths, and had a contemplative air. The hair was arranged as he had formerly seen it, and the thoughtful look was strongest in the beautiful grey eyes, which were more serious than of yore. Ayrault stood riveted to the spot and gazed. "I could have been happy with her," he mused, and to think she is no more!"

As drops fell from the ice, tears rose to his eyes.
. . . . . . .

"What a pretty girl!" said Bearwarden to Cortlandt, as they came upon it later in the day. "The

face seems etched or imprinted by some peculiar form of freezing far within the ice."

The next morning they again set out, and so tramped, hunted, and investigated with varying success for ten Saturnian days. They found that in the animal and plant forms of life Nature had often, by some seeming accident, struck out in a course very different from any on the earth. Many of the animals were bipeds and tripeds, the latter arranged in tandem, the last leg being evidently an enormously developed tail, by which the creature propelled itself as with a spring. The quadrupeds had also sometimes wings, and their bones were hollow, like those of birds. Whether this great motive and lifting power was the result of the planet's size and the power of gravitation, or whether some creatures had in addition the power of developing a degree of apergetic repulsion to offset it, as they suspected in the case of the boa-constrictor that fell upon Cortlandt on Jupiter, they could not absolutely ascertain. Life was far less prolific on Saturn than on Jupiter, doubtless as a result of its greater distance from the sun, and of its extremes of climate, almost all organic life being driven to the latitudes near the equator.

There were, as on Jupiter, many variations from the forms of life to which they were accustomed, and adaptations to the conditions in which they found themselves; but, with the exception of the strange manifestations of spirit life, they found the workings of the fundamental laws the same. Often when they woke at night the air was luminous, and they were convinced that if they remained there long enough it would be easy to devise some telegraphic code of light-flashes by which they could communicate with the spirit world, and so get ideas from the host of spirits that had already solved the problem of life and death, but who were not as yet sufficiently developed to be able to return to the earth. One day they stopped to investigate what they had supposed to be an optical illusion. They observed that leaves and other light substances floated several inches above the surface of the water in the pools. On coming to the edge and making tests, they found a light liquid, as invisible as air, superimposed upon the water, with sufficient buoyancy to sustain dry wood and also some forms of life. They also observed that insects coming close to the surface and apparently inhaling it, rapidly increased in size and weight, from which they concluded it must throw off nitrogen, carbon, or some other nourishment in the form of gas. The depth upon the water was unaffected by rain, which passed through it, but depended rather on the condition of the atmosphere, from which it was evidently condensed. There seemed also to be a relation between the amount of this liquid and the activity of the spirits. Finally, when their ammunition showed signs of running low, they decided to return to the Callisto, go in it to the other side of the planet, and resume their investigations there. Accordingly, they set out to retrace their steps, returning by a course a few miles to one side of the way they had come, and making the cave their objective point. Arriving there one evening about sunset, they pitched their camp. The cave was sheltered and comfortable, and they made preparation for passing the night.

"I shall be sorry," said Ayrault, as they sat near their fire, "to leave this place without again seeing the bishop. He said we could impress him anywhere, but it may be more difficult to do that at the antipodes than here."

"It does seem," said Bearwarden, "as though we should be missing it in not seeing him again, if that

is possible. Nothing but a poison-storm brought him the first time, and it is not certain that even in such an emergency would he come again uncalled."

"I think," said Ayrault, "as none of the spirits here are malevolent, they would warn us of danger if they could. The bishop's spirit seems to have been the only one with sufficiently developed power to reappear as a man. I therefore suggest that to-morrow we try to make him feel our thought and bring him to us."

3.7. THE SPIRIT'S SECOND VISIT.

Accordingly, the next morning they concentrated their minds simultaneously on the spirit, wishing with all their strength that he should reappear.

"Whether he be far or near," said Ayrault, "he must feel that, for we are using the entire force of our minds."

Shadows began to form, and dancing prismatic colours appeared, but as yet there was no sign of the deceased bishop, when suddenly he took shape among them, his appearance and disappearance being much like that of stereopticon views on the sheet before a lantern. He held himself erect, and his thoughtful, dignified face had the same calm expression it had worn before.

"We attracted your attention," said Ayrault, "in the way you said we might, because we longed so to see you."

"Yes," added Bearwarden and Cortlandt, "we felt we must see you again."

"I am always at your service," replied the spirit, and will answer your questions. With regard to my visibility and invisibility" — he continued, with a smile, "for I will not wait for you to ask the explanation of what is in your minds — it is very simple. A man's soul can never die; a manifestation of the soul is the spirit; this has entity, consciousness, and will, and these also live forever. As in the natural or material life, as I shall call it, will affects the material first. Thus, a child has power to move its hand or a material object, as a toy, before it can become the medium in a psychological seance. So it is here. Before becoming visible to your eyes, I, by my will, draw certain material substances in the form of gases from the ground, water, or air around me. These take any shape I wish — not necessarily that of man, though it is more natural to appear as we did on earth — and may absorb a portion of light, and so be able to cast a shadow or break up the white rays into prismatic colours, or they may be wholly invisible. By an effort of the will, then, I combine and condense these gases — which consist principally of

oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon — into flesh, blood, water, or anything else. You have already learned on earth that, by the application of heat, every solid and every liquid substance, which is solid or liquid simply because of the temperature at which you find it, can be expanded into gas or gases; and that by cold and pressure every gas can be reduced to a liquid or a solid. On earth the state of a substance, whether solid, liquid, or gaseous, depends simply upon those two conditions. Here neither thermal nor barometric changes are required, for, by mastering the new natural laws that at death become patent to our senses, we have all the necessary control. It requires but an effort of my will to be almost instantly clothed in human form, and but another effort to rearrange the molecules in such a way as to make the envelope visible. Some who have been dead longer, or had a greater natural aptitude than I, have advanced further, and all are learning; but the difference in the rate at which spirits acquire control of previously unknown natural laws varies far more than among individuals on earth.

"These forms of organic life do not disintegrate till after death; here in the natural state they break

down and dissolve into their structural elements in full bloom, as was done by the fungi. The poisonous element in the deadly gust, against which I warned you, came from the gaseous ingredients of toadstools, which but seldom, and then only when the atmosphere has the greatest affinity for them, dissolve automatically, producing a death-spreading wave, against which your meteorological instruments in future can warn you. The slight fall you noticed in temperature was because the specific heat of these gases is high, and to become gas while in the solid state they had to withdraw some warmth from the air. The fatal breath of the winged lizards — or dragons, as you call them — results from the same cause, the action of their digestion breaking up the fungus, which does not kill them, because they exhale the poisonous part in gaseous form with their breath. The mushrooms dissolve more easily; the natural separation that takes place as they reach a certain stage in their development being precipitated by concussion or shock.

"Having seen that, as on earth, we gain control of the material first, our acquisitiveness then extends to a better understanding and appreciation of our

new senses, and we are continually finding new objects of beauty, and new beauties in things we supposed we already understood. We were accustomed on earth to the marvellous variety that Nature produced from apparently simple means and presented to our very limited senses; here there is an indescribably greater variety to be examined by vastly keener senses. The souls in hell have an equally keen but distorted counterpart of our senses, so that they see in a magnified form everything vile in themselves and in each other. To their senses only the ugly and hateful side is visible, so that the beauty and perfume of a flower are to them as loathsome as the appearance and fumes of a toadstool. As evolution and the tendency of everything to perpetuate itself and intensify its peculiarities are invariable throughout the universe, these unhappy souls and ourselves seem destined to diverge more and more as time goes on; and while we constantly become happier as our capacity for happiness increases, their sharpening senses will give them a worse and worse idea of each other, till their mutual repugnance will know no bounds, and of everything concerning which they obtain knowledge through their senses. Thus these poor creatures seem to be the victims of circumstances and the unalterable laws of fate, and were there such a thing as death, their misery would unquestionably finally break their hearts. That there will be final forgiveness for the condemned, has long been a human hope; but as yet they have experienced none, and there is no analogy for it in Nature.

"But while you have still your earthly bodies and the opportunities they give you of serving God, you need not be concerned about hell; no one on earth, knowing how things really are, would ever again forsake His ways. The earthly state is the most precious opportunity of securing that for which a man would give his all. Even from the most worldly point of view, a man is an unspeakable fool not to improve his talents and do good. What would those in sheol not give now for but one day in the flesh on earth, of which you unappreciatives may still have so many? The well-used opportunities of even one hour might bring joy to those in paradise forever, and greatly ease the lot of those in hell. In doing acts of philanthropy, however, you must remember the text of the sermon the doctor of divinity preached

to Craniner and Ridley just before they perished at the stake: `Though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing' — which shows that even good deeds must be performed in the proper spirit.

"A new era is soon to dawn on earth. Notwithstanding your great material progress, the future will exceed all the past. Man will find every substance's maximum use, thereby vastly increasing his comfort. Then, when advanced in science and reason, with the power of his senses increased by the delicate instruments that you, as the forerunners of the coming man, are already learning to make, may he cease to be a groveller, like our progenitors the quadrupeds, and may his thoughts rise to his Creator, who has brought him to such heights through all the intricacies of the way. Your preparation for the life to come can also be greatly aided by intercourse with those who have already died. When you really want to associate spiritually with us, you can do so; for, though perhaps only one in a hundred million can, like me, so clothe himself as to be again visible to mortal eyes, many of us could affect gelatine or extremely sensitive plates that would show interruptions

in the ultra-violet chemical rays that, like the thermal red beyond the visible spectroscope, you know exist though you can neither see nor feel them. Spirits could not affect the magnetic eye, because magnetism, though immaterial itself, is induced and affected only by a material substance. The impression on the plate, however, like the prismatic colours you have already noticed, can be produced by a slight rarefaction of the hydrogen in the air, so that, though no spirit could be photographed as such, a code and language might be established by means of the effect produced on the air by the spirit's mind. I am so interested in the subject of my disquisition that I had almost forgotten that your spirits are still subject to the requirements of the body. Last time I dined with you; let me now play the host."

"We shall be charmed to dine with you," said Ayrault, "and shall be only too glad of anything that will keep you with us."

"Then," said the spirit, "as the tablecloth is laid, we need only to have something on it. Let each please hold a corner," he continued, taking one himself with his left hand, while he passed his right to his brow. Soon flakes as of snow began to form in

the air above, and slowly descended upon the cloth; and, glancing up, the three men saw that for a considerable height this process was going on, the flakes increasing in size as they fell till they attained a length of several inches. When there was enough for them all on the table-cloth the shower ceased. Sitting down on the ground, they began to eat this manna, which had a delicious flavour and marvellous purity and freshness.

"As you doubtless have already suspected," said the spirit, "the basis of this in every case is carbon, combined with nitrogen in its solid form, and with the other gases the atmosphere here contains. You may notice that the flakes vary in colour as well as in taste, both of which are of course governed by the gas with which the carbon, also in its visible form, is combined. It is almost the same process as that performed by every plant in withdrawing carbon from the air and storing it in its trunk in the form of wood, which, as charcoal, is again almost pure carbon, only in this case the metamorphosis is far more rapid. This is perhaps the natural law that Elijah, by God's aid, invoked in the miracle of the widow's cruse, and that produced the manna that fed

the Israelites in the desert; while apergy came in play in the case of the stream that Moses called from the rock in the wilderness, which followed the descendants of Abraham over the rough country through which they passed. In examining miracles with the utmost deference, as we have a right to, we see one law running through all. Even in Christ's miracle of changing the water to wine, there was a natural law, though only one has dwelt on earth who could make that change, which, from a chemist's standpoint, was peculiarly difficult on account of the required fermentation, which is the result of a developed and matured germ. Many of His miracles, however, are as far beyond my small power as heaven is above the earth. Much of the substance of the loaves and fishes with which He fed the multitude — the carbon and nitrogenous products — also came from the air, though He could have taken them from many other sources. The combination and building up of these in the ordinary way would have taken weeks or months, but was performed instantaneously by His mighty power."

"What natural laws are known to you," asked Bearwarden, "that we do not understand, or

concerning the existence of which we are ignorant?"

"Most of the laws in the invisible world," said the spirit, are the counterpart or extension of laws that appear on earth, though you as yet understand but a small part of those, many not having come to your notice. You, for instance, know that light, heat, and motion are analogous, and either of the last two can be converted into the other; but in practice you produce motion of the water molecules by the application of heat, and seldom reverse it. One of the first things we master here is the power to freeze or boil water, by checking the motion of the molecules in one case, and by increasing it, and their mutual repulsion, in the other. This is by virtue of a simple law, though in this case there is no natural manifestation of it on earth with which to compare it. While knowledge must be acquired here through study, as on earth, the new senses we receive with the awakening from death render the doing so easy, though with only the senses we had before it would have been next to impossible.

"At this moment snow is falling on the Callisto; but this you could not know by seeing, and scarcely

any degree of evolution could develop your sight sufficiently, unassisted by death. With your instruments, however, you could already perceive it, notwithstanding the intervening rocks.

"Your research on earth is the best and most thorough in the history of the race; and could we but give you suggestions as to the direction in which to push it, the difference between yourselves and angels might be but little more than that between the number and intensity of the senses and the composition of the body. By the combination of natural laws you have rid yourselves of the impediment of material weight, and can roam through space like spirits, or as Columbus, by virtue of the confidence that came with the discovery of the mariner's compass, roamed upon and explored the sea. You have made a good beginning, and were not your lives so short, and their requirements so peremptory, you might visit the distant stars.

"I will show you the working of evolution. Life sleeps in minerals, dreams in plants, and wakes in you. The rock worn by frost and age crumbles to earth and soil. This enters the substance of the primordial plant, which, slowly rising; produces the

animal germ. After that the way is clear, and man is evolved from protoplasm through the vertebrate and the ape. Here we have the epitome of the struggle for life in the ages past, and the analogue of the journey in the years to come. Does not the Almighty Himself make this clear where He says through his servant Isaiah, `Behold of these stones will I raise up children'? — and the name Adam means red earth. God, having brought man so far, will not let evolution cease, and the next stage of life must be the spiritual."

"Can you tell us anything," asked Ayrault, "concerning the bodies that those surviving the final judgment will receive?"

"Notwithstanding the unfolding of knowledge that has come to us here," replied the spirit, "there are still some subjects concerning which we must look for information to the inspired writers in the Bible, and every gain or discovery goes to prove their veracity. We know that there are celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial, and that the spiritual bodies we shall receive in the resurrection will have power and will be incorruptible and immortal. We also know by analogy and reason that they will be

unaffected by the cold and void of space, so that their possessors can range through the universe for non-nillions and decillions of miles, that they will have marvellous capacities for enjoying what they find, and that no undertaking or journey will be too difficult, though it be to the centre of the sun. Though many of us can already visit the remote regions of space as spirits, none can as yet see God; but we know that as the sight we are to receive with our new bodies sharpens, the pure in heart will see Him, though He is still as invisible to the eyes of the most developed here as the ether of space is to yours."

3.8. CASSANDRA AND COSMOLOGY.

The water-jug being empty, Ayrault took it up, and, crossing the ridge of a small hill, descended to a running-brook. He had filled it, and was straightening himself, when the stone on which he stood turned, and he might have fallen, had not the bishop, of whose presence he had been unaware, stretched out his hand and upheld him.

"I thought you might need a little help," he said with a smile, "and so walked beside you, though you knew it not. Water is heavy, and you may not yet have become accustomed to its Saturnian weight."

"Many thanks, my master," replied Ayrault, retaining his hand. "Were it not that I am engaged to the girl I love, and am sometimes haunted by the thought that in my absence she may be forgetting

me, I should wish to spend the rest of my natural life here, unless I could persuade you to go with me to the earth."

"By remaining here," replied the spirit, with a sad look, "you would be losing the most priceless opportunities of doing good. Neither will I go with you; but, as your distress is real, I will tell you of anything happening on earth that you wish to know."

"Tell me, then, what the person now in my thoughts is doing."

"She is standing in a window facing west, watering some forget-me-nots with a small silver sprinkler which has a ruby in the handle."

"Can you see anything else?"

"Beneath the jewel is an inscription that runs:

'By those who in warm July are born
A single ruby should be worn;
Then will they be exempt and free
From love's doubts and anxiety.'"

"Marvellous! Had I any doubts as to your prescience and power, they would be dispelled now. One thing more let me ask, however: Does she still love me?"

"In her mind is but one thought, and in her heart is an image — that of the man before me. She loves you with all her soul."

"My most eager wish is satisfied, and for the moment my heart is at rest," replied Ayrault, as they turned their steps towards camp. "Yet, such is my weakness by nature, that, ere twenty-four hours have passed I shall long to have you tell me again."

"I have been in love myself," replied the spirit, "and know the feeling; yet to be of the smallest service to you gives me far more happiness than it can give you. The mutual love in paradise exceeds even the lover's love on earth, for it is only those that loved and can love that are blessed.

"You can hardly realize," the bishop continued, as they rejoined Bearwarden and Cortlandt, "the joy that a spirit in paradise experiences when, on reopening his eyes after passing death, which is but the portal, he finds himself endowed with sight that enables him to see such distances and with such distinctness. The solar system, with this ringed planet, its swarm of asteroids, and its intra-Mercurial planets — one of which, Vulcan, you have already discovered — is a beautiful sight. The planets nearest the sun receive

such burning rays that their surfaces are red-hot, and at the equator at perihelion are molten. These are not seen from the earth, because, rising or setting almost simultaneously with the sun, they are lost in its rays. The great planet beyond Neptune's orbit is perhaps the most interesting. This we call Cassandra, because it would be a prophet of evil to any visitor from the stars who should judge the solar system by it. This planet is nearly as large as Jupiter, being 80,000 miles in diameter, but has a specific gravity lighter than Saturn. Bode's law, you know, says, Write down 0, 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96. Add 4 to each, and get 4, 7, 10, 16, 28, 52, 100; and this series of numbers represents very nearly the relative distances of the planets from the sun. According to this law, you would expect the planet next beyond Neptune to be about 5,000,000,000 miles from the sun. But it is about 9,500,000,000, so that there is a gap between Neptune and Cassandra, as between Mars and Jupiter, except that in Cassandra's case there are no asteroids to show where any planet was; we must, then, suppose it is an exception to Bode's law, or that there was a planet that has completely disappeared. As Cassandra would be within the law if there had been an intermediary planet, we have good prima facie reason for believing that it existed. Cassandra takes, in round numbers, a thousand years to complete its orbit, and from it the sun, though brighter, appears no larger than the earth's evening or morning star. Cassandra has also three large moons; but these, when full, shine with a pale-grey light, like the old moon in the new moon's arms, in that terrestrial phenomenon when the earth, by reflecting the crescent's light, and that of the sun, makes the dark part visible. The temperature at Cassandra's surface is but little above the cold of space, and no water exists in the liquid state, it being as much a solid as aluminum or glass. There are rivers and lakes, but these consist of liquefied hydrogen and other gases, the heavier liquid collected in deep Places, and the lighter, with less than half the specific gravity of ether, floating upon it without mixing, as oil on water. When the heavier penetrates to a sufficient depth, the interior being still warm, it is converted into gas and driven back to the surface, only to be recondensed on reaching the upper air. Thus it may happen that two rains composed of separate liquids may fall together. There being but little of any other atmosphere, much of it consists of what you might call the vapour of hydrogen, and many of the well-known gases and liquids on earth exist only as liquids and solids; so that, were there mortal inhabitants on Cassandra, they might build their houses of blocks of oxygen or chlorine, as you do of limestone or marble, and use ice that never melts, in place of glass, for transparence. They would also use mercury for bullets in their rifles, just as inhabitants of the intra-Vulcan planets at the other extreme might, if their bodies consisted of asbestos, or were in any other way non-combustibly constituted, bathe in tin, lead, or even zinc, which ordinarily exist in the liquid state, as water and mercury do on the earth.

"Though Cassandra's atmosphere, such as it is, is mostly clear, for the evaporation from the rivers and icy mediterraneans is slight, the brightness of even the highest noon is less than an earthly twilight, and the stars never cease to shine. The dark base of the rocky cliffs is washed by the frigid tide, but there is scarcely a sound, for the pebbles cannot be moved by the weightless waves, and an occasional murmur is all that is heard. Great rocks of ice reflect the light of the grey moons, and never

a leaf falls or a bird sings. With the exception of the mournful ripples, the planet is silent as the grave. The animal and plant kingdoms do not exist; only the mineral and spiritual worlds. I say spiritual, because there are souls upon it; but it is the home of the condemned in hell. Here dwell the transgressors who died unrepentant, and those who were not saved by faith. This is the one instance in which I do not enjoy my developed sight, for I sometimes glance in their direction, and the vision that meets me, as my eyes focus, distresses my soul. Their senses are like an imperfect mirror, magnifying all that is bad in one another, and distorting anything still partially good when that exists. All those things that might at least distract them are hollow, their misery being the inevitable result of the condition of mind to which they became accustomed on earth and which brought them to Cassandra. But let us turn to something brighter.

"Though the solar system may seem complex, the sun is but a star among the millions in the Milky Way, and, compared with the planetary systems of Sirius, the stars of the Southern Cross, and the motions of the nebula, it is simplicity itself.

Compared with the splendour of Sirius, with its diameter of twelve million miles, the sun, measuring but eight hundred and forty thousand, becomes insignificant; and this giant's system includes groups and clusters of planets, many with three times the mass of Jupiter, five and six together, each a different colour, revolving about a common centre, while they swing about their primary. Their numerous moons have satellites encircling them, with orbits in some cases at right angles to the plane of the ecliptic, so that they shine perpendicularly on what correspond to the arctic and antarctic regions, while their axes are so inclined that the satellites turn a complete somersault at each revolution, producing glistening effects of ice and snow at the poles. Some of the moons are at a red or white heat, and so prevent the chill of night on the planets, while they shine with more than reflected light. In addition to the five or six large planets in each group, which, however, are many millions of miles apart, there is in some clusters a small planet that swings backward and forward across the common centre, like a pendulum, but in nearly a straight line; and while this multiplicity of motion goes on, the whole aggregation sweeps majestically around Sirius, its mighty sun. Our little solar system contains, as we know, about one thousand planets, satellites, and asteroids large enough to be dignified by the name of heavenly bodies. Vast numbers of the stars have a hundred and even a thousand times the mass of our sun, and their systems being relatively as complex as ours — in some cases even more so — they contain a hundred thousand or a million individual bodies.

"Over sixty million bright or incandescent stars were visible to the terrestrial telescopes a hundred years ago, the average size of which far exceeds our sun. To the magnificent telescopes of to-day they are literally countless, and the number can be indefinitely extended as your optical resources grow. Yet the number of stars you see is utterly insignificant compared with the cold and dark ones you cannot see, but concerning which you are constantly learning more, by observing their effect on the bright ones, both by perturbing them and by obscuring their rays. Occasionally, as you know, a star of the twelfth or fifteenth magnitude, or one that has been invisible, flares up for several months to the fourth or fifth,

through a collision with some dark giant, and then returns to what it was in the beginning, a gaseous, filmy nebula. These innumerable hosts of dark monsters, though dead, are centres of systems, like most of the stars you can see.

"A slight consideration of these figures will show that, notwithstanding the number of souls the Creator has given life on earth, each one might in fact have a system to himself; and that, however long the little globe may remain, as it were, a mint, in which souls are tried by fire and moulded, and receive their final stamp, they will always have room to circulate, and will be prized according to the impress their faces or hearts must show. But Sirius itself is moving many times faster than the swiftest cannon ball, carrying its system with it; and I see you asking, `To what does all this motion tend?' I will show you. Many quadrillions of miles away, so far that your most powerful telescopes have not yet caught a glimmer, rests in its serene grandeur a star that we call Cosmos, because it is the centre of this universe. Its diameter is as great as the diameter of Cassandra's orbit, and notwithstanding its terrific heat, its specific gravity, on account of the irresistible pressure at and near the centre,

is as great as that of the planet Mercury. This holds all that your eyes or mine can see; and the so-called motions of the stars — for we know that Sirius, among others, is receding — is but the difference in the rate at which the different systems and constellations swing around Cosmos, though in doing so they often revolve about other systems or swing round common centres, so that many are satellites of satellites many times repeated. The orbits of some are circular, and of others elliptical, as those of comets, and some revolve about each other, or, as we have seen, about a common point while they perform their celestial journey. A star, therefore, recedes or advances, as Jupiter and Venus with relation to the earth. The planet in the smaller orbit moves faster than that in the larger, so that the intervening distances wax and wane, though all are going in the same general direction. In the case of the members of the solar system, astronomical record can tell when even a most distant known planet has been in opposition or conjunction; but the earth has scarcely been habitable since the sun was last in its present position in its orbit around Cosmos. The curve that our system follows is of such radius that it would require the most precise observations for centuries to show that it was not a straight line.

"We call this the universe because it is all that the clearest eyes or telescopes have been able to see, but it is only a subdivision — in fact, but a system on a vaster scale than that of the sun or of Sirius. Far beyond this visible universe, my intuition tells me, are other systems more gigantic than this, and entirely different in many respects. Even the effects of gravitation are modified by the changed condition; for these systems are spread out flat, like the rings of this planet, and the ether of space is luminous instead of black, as here. These systems are but in a later stage of development than ours; and in the course of evolution our visible universe will be changed in the same way, as I can explain.

"In incalculable ages, the forward motion of the planets and their satellites will be checked by the resistance of the ether of space and the meteorites and solid matter they encounter. Meteorites also overtake them, and, by striking them as it were in the rear, propel them, but more are encountered in front — an illustration of which you can have by walking rapidly or riding on horseback on a rainy day, in

which case more drops will strike your chest than your back. The same rule applies to bodies in space, while the meteorites encountered have more effect than those following, since in one case it is the speed of the meteor minus that of the planet, and in the other the sum of the two velocities. With this checking of the forward motion, the centrifugal force decreases, and the attraction of the central body has more effect. When this takes place the planet or satellite falls slightly towards the body around which it revolves, thereby increasing its speed till the centrifugal force again balances the centripetal. This would seem to make it descend by fits and starts, but in reality the approach is nearly constant, so that the orbits are in fact slightly spiral. What is true of the planets and satellites is also true of the stars with reference to Cosmos; though many even of these have subordinate motions in their great journey. Though the satellites of the moons revolve about the primaries in orbits inclined at all kinds of angles to the planes of the ecliptics, and even the moons vary in their paths about the planets, the planets themselves revolve about the stars, like those of this system about the sun, in substantially the same plane; and what is true of the planets is even more true of the stars in their orbits about Cosmos, so that when, after incalculable ages, they do fall, they strike this monster sun at or near its equator, and not falling perpendicularly, but in a line varying but slightly from a tangent, and at terrific speed, they cause the colossus to rotate more and more rapidly on its own axis, till it must become greatly flattened at the poles, as the earth is slightly, and as Jupiter and Saturn are a good deal. Even though not all the stars are exactly in the plane of Cosmos's equator, as you can see they are not there are as many above as below it, so that the general average will be there; and as all are moving in the same direction, it is not necessary for all to strike the same line, those striking nearer the poles, where the circles are smaller, and where the surface is not being carried forward so fast by the giant's rotation, will have even more effect in increasing its speed, since it will be like attaching the driving-rods of a locomotive near the axle instead of near the circumference, and with enough power will produce even greater results. As Cosmos waxes greater from the result of these continual accretions, its attraction for the stars will increase, until those coming from the outer regions of its universe will move at such terrific speed in their spiral orbits that before coming in contact they will be almost invisible, having already absorbed all solid matter revolving about themselves. These accessions of moving matter, continually received at and near its equator, will cause Cosmos to spread out like Saturn's rings till it becomes flat, though the balance of forces will be so perfect that it is doubtful whether an animal or a man placed there would feel much change.

"But these universes — or, more accurately, divisions of the universe — already planes, though the vast surfaces are not so flat as to preclude beautiful and gently rolling slopes, are spirit-lands, and will be inhabited only by spirits. Then there are great phosphorescent areas, and the colour of the surface changes with every hour of the day, from the most brilliant crimson to the softest shade of blue, radiant with many colours that your eyes cannot now see. There are also myriads of scented streams, consisting of hundreds of different and multi-coloured liquids, each with a perfume sweeter than the most delicate flower, and pouring forth the most heavenly music as they go on their way. But be not surprised at the magnitude

of the change, for is it not written in Revelation, `I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away'? Nor can we be surprised at vastness, sublimity, and beauty such as never was conceived of, for do we not find this in His word, `Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him'? In this blissful state, those that feared God and obeyed their consciences will live on forever; but their rest can never become stagnation, for evolution is one of the most constant laws, and never ceases, and they must always go onward and upward, unspeakably blessed by the consciences they made their rule in life, till in purity and power they shall equal or exceed the angels of their Lord in heaven.

But you men of finite understanding will ask, as I myself should have asked, How, by the law of hydrostatics, can liquids flow on a plane? Remember that, though these divisions are astronomical or geometrical planes, their surfaces undulate; but the moving cause is this: At the centre of these planes is a pole, the analogue, we will say, of the magnetic pole on earth, that has a more effective attraction for

a gas than for a liquid. When liquids approach the periphery of the circle, the rapid rotation and decreased pressure cause them to break up, whereupon the elementary gases return to the centre in the atmosphere, if near the surface, forming a gentle breeze. On nearing the centre, the cause of the separation being removed, the gases reunite to form a liquid, and the centrifugal force again sends this on its journey."

"Is there no way," asked Bearwarden, "by which a man may retrieve himself, if he has lost or misused his opportunities on earth?"

"The way a man lays up treasures in heaven, when on earth," replied the spirit, "is by gladly doing something for some one else, usually in some form sacrificing self. In hell no one can do anything for any one else, because every one can have the semblance of anything he wishes by merely concentrating his mind upon it, though, when he has it, it is but a shadow and gives him no pleasure. Thus no one can give any one else anything he cannot obtain himself; and if he could, since it would be no sacrifice on his part, he would derive no great moral comfort from it. Neither can any one comfort any one

else by putting his acts or offences in a new light, for every one knows the whole truth about himself and everybody else, so that nothing can be made to appear favourably or unfavourably. All this, however, is supposing there is the desire to be kind; but how can spirits that were selfish and ill-disposed on earth, where there are so many softening influences, have good inclinations in hell, where they loathe one another with constantly increasing strength?

"Inasmuch as both the good and the bad continue on the lines on which they started when on earth, we are continually drawing nearer to God, while they are departing. The gulf may be only one of feeling, but that is enough. It follows, then, that with God as our limit, which we of course can never reach, their limit, in the geometrical sense, must be total separation from Him. Though all spirits, we are told, live forever, it occurs to me that in God's mercy there may be a gradual end; for though to the happy souls in heaven a thousand years may seem as nothing, existence in hell must drag along with leaden limbs, and a single hour seem like a lifetime of regret. Since it is dreadful to think that such unsoothed anguish should continue forever, I have

often pondered whether it might not be that, by a form of involution and reversal of the past law, the spirit that came to life evolved from the, mineral, plant, and animal worlds, may mercifully retrace its steps one by one, till finally the soul shall penetrate the solid rock and hide itself by becoming part of the planet. Many people in my day believed that after death their souls would enter stately trees, and spread abroad great branches, dropping dead leaves over the places on which they had stood while on earth. This might be the last step in the awful tragedy of the fall and involution of a human soul. In this way, those who had wasted the priceless opportunities given them by God might be mercifully obliterated, for it seems as if they would not be needed in the economy of the universe. The Bible, however, mentions no such end, and says unmistakably that hell will last forever; so that in this supposition, as in many others, the wish is probably father of the thought."

"But," persisted Bearwarden, "how about death-bed repentances?"

"Those," replied the spirit, "are few and far between. The pains of death at the last hour leave but little room for aught but vain regret. A man dies

suddenly, or may be unconscious some time before the end. But they do occur. The question is, How much credit is it to be good when you can do no more harm? The time to resist evil and do that which is right is while the temptation is on and in its strength. While life lasts there is hope, but the books are sealed by death. The tree must fall to one side or the other — there is no middle ground — and as the tree falleth, so it lieth.

"This, however, is a gloomy subject, and one that in your heart of hearts you understand. I would rather tell you more of the beauties and splendours of space — of the orange, red, and blue stars, and of the tremendous cyclonic movements going on within them, which are even more violent than the storms that rage in the sun. The clouds, as the spectroscope has already shown, consist of iron, gold, and platinum in the form of vapour, while the openings revealed by sun-spots, or rather star-spots, are so tremendous that a comparatively small one would contain many dozen such globes as the earth. I could tell you also of the mysteries of the great dark companions of some of the stars, and of the stars that are themselves dark and cold, with naught but the far

away constellations to cheer them, on which night reigns eternally, and that far outnumber the stars you can see. Also of the multiplicity of sex and extraordinary forms of life that exist there, though on none of them are there mortal men like those on the earth.

"Nature, in the process of evolution, has in all these cases gone off on an entirely different course, the most intelligent and highly developed species being in the form of marvellously complex reptiles, winged serpents that sing most beautifully, but whose blood is cold, being prevented from freezing in the upper regions of the atmosphere by the presence of salt and chemicals, and which are so intelligent that they have practically subdued many of these dark stars to themselves. On others, the most highly developed species have hollow, bell-shaped tentacles, into which they inject two or more opposing gases from opposite sides of their bodies, which, in combination, produce a strong explosion. This provides them with an easy and rapid locomotion, since the explosions find a sufficient resistance in the surrounding air to propel the monsters much faster than birds. These can at pleasure make their breath

so poisonous that the lungs of any creatures except themselves inhaling it are at once turned to parchment. Others can give their enemies or their prey an electric shock, sending a bolt through the heart, or can paralyze the mind physically by an effort of their wills, causing the brain to decompose while the victim is still alive. Others have the same power that snakes have, though vastly intensified, mesmerizing their victims from afar.

Still others have such delicate senses that in a way they commune with spirits, though they have no souls themselves; for in no part or corner of the universe except on earth are there animals that have souls. Yet they know the meaning of the word, and often bewail their hard lot in that no part of them can live when the heart has ceased to beat.

"Ah, my friends, if we had no souls — if, like the aesthetic reptilia, we knew that when our dust dissolved our existence would be over — we should realize the preciousness of what we hold so lightly now. Man and the spirits and angels are the only beings with souls, and in no place except on earth are new souls being created. This gives you the greatest and grandest idea of the dignity of life and its

inestimable value. But it is as difficult to describe the higher wonders of the stellar worlds to you as to picture the glories of sunset to a blind man, for you have experienced nothing with which to compare them. Instead of seeing all that really is, you see but a small part."

3.9. DOCTOR CORTLANDT SEES HIS GRAVE.

"Is it not distasteful to you," Cortlandt asked, "to live so near these loathsome dragons?"

"Not in the least," replied the spirit. "They affect us no more than the smallest micro-organism, for we see both with equal clearness. Since we are not obliged to breathe, they cannot injure us; and, besides, they serve to illustrate the working of God's laws, and there is beauty in everything for those that have the senses required for perceiving it. A feature of the spiritual world is, that it does not interfere with the natural, and the natural, except through faith, is not aware of its presence."

"Then why," asked Cortlandt, "was it necessary for the Almighty to bring your souls to Saturn, since there would have been no overcrowding if you had remained on the earth?"

"That," replied the spirit, "was part of His wisdom; for the spirit, being able at once to look back into the natural world, if in it, would be troubled at the mistakes and tribulations of his friends. Now, as a rule, before a spirit can return to earth, his or her relatives and friends have also died; or, if he can return before that happens, he is so advanced that he sees the ulterior purpose, and therefore the wisdom of God's ways, and is not distressed thereby. Lastly, as their expanding senses grew, it would be painful for the blessed and condemned spirits to be together. Therefore we are brought here, where God reveals Himself to us more and more, and the flight of the other souls — those unhappy ones — does not cease till they reach Cassandra."

"Can the souls on Cassandra also leave it in time and roam at will?" asked Cortlandt.

"I have seen none of them myself in my journeys to other planets; but as the sun shines upon the just and the unjust, and there is no exception to Nature's laws, I can reply that in time they do, and with equal powers their incentive to roam would be greater; for we are drawn together by common sympathy and pure, requited love, while they are mutually repelled.

Of course, some obtain a measure of freedom before the rest, and these naturally roam the farthest, and the more they see and the farther they go, the stronger becomes their abhorrence for everything they meet."

"Cannot you spirits help us, and the mortals now on earth, to escape this fate?"

"The greatest hope for your bodies and souls lies in the communion with those that have passed through death; for the least of them can tell you more than the wisest man on earth; and could you all come or send representatives to the multitudes here who cannot as yet return to you, but few on earth would be so quixotically sinful as to refuse our advice. Since, however, the greatest good comes to men from the learning that they make an effort to secure, it is for you to strive to reach us, who can act as go-betweens from God to you."

"It seems to me," said Bearwarden, "that people are better now than formerly. The sin of idolatry, for instance, has disappeared — has it not?"

"Men still set up idols of wealth, passion, or ambition in their hearts. These they worship as in days gone by, only the form has changed."

"Could the souls on Cassandra do us bodily or mental injury, if we could ever reach their planet?" asked Bearwarden.

"They might oppress and distress you, but your faith would protect you wherever you might go."

"Can you give us a taste of your sense of prescience?" asked Bearwarden again; "for, since it is not clear in what degree the condemned receive this, and neither is it by any means sure that I shall be saved, I should like for once in my history to experience this sense of divinity, before my entity ends in stone."

"I will transfer to you my sense of prescience," replied the spirit, "that you may foresee as prophets have. In so doing, I shall but anticipate, since you will yourselves in time obtain this sense in a greater or less degree. Is there any event in the future you would like to see, in order that, when the vision is fulfilled, it may tend to stablish your faith?"

"Since I am the oldest," replied the doctor, "and shall probably die before my friends, reveal to us, I pray you, the manner of my death and the events immediately following. This may prove an object-lesson to them, and will greatly interest me."

"Your death will be caused by blood-poisoning, brought on by an accident," began the spirit. "Some daybreak will find you weak, after a troubled night, with your bodily resources at a low ebb. Sunset will see you weaker, with your power of resistance almost gone. Midnight will find you weaker still, and but little removed from the point of death. A few hours later a kind hand will close the lids of your half-shut eyes, which never again will behold the light. The coffin will inclose your body, and the last earthly journey begin. Now," the spirit continued, "you shall all use my sight instead of your own."

The walls of the cave seemed to expand, till they resembled those of a great cathedral, while the stalactites appeared to be metamorphosed into Gothic columns. They found themselves among a large congregation that had come to attend the last sad rites, while the great organ played Chopin's "Funeral March." The high vault and arches received the organ's tone, and a sombre light pervaded the interior. There was a slight flutter and a craning of necks among those in the pews, as the procession began to ascend the aisle. While the slow step of the pallbearers and those carrying the coffin sounded on

the stone floor, the clear voice of the clergyman that headed the procession sounded these words through the cathedral: "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth." As the bier advanced, Bearwarden and Ayrault recognized themselves among the pallbearers — the former with grey mustache and hair, the latter considerably aged. The hermetically sealed lead coffin was inclosed in a wooden case, and the whole was draped and covered with flowers.

"Oh, my faith!" cried Cortlandt, "I see my face within, yet it is but a decomposing mass that I once described as I."

Then again did the minister's voice proclaim, "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die."

The bearers gently set down their burden; the minister read the ever-impressive chapter of St. Paul to the Corinthians; a bishop solemnly and silently sprinkled earth on the coffin; and the choir sang the 398th hymn, beginning with the words, "Hark, hark my soul! angelic songs are swelling," which had always

been Cortlandt's favourite and the service was at an end. The bearers again shouldered all that was left of Henry Cortlandt, and his relatives accompanied this to the cemetery.

Then came a sweeping change of scene. A host of monuments and gravestones reflected the sunlight, while a broad river ebbed and flowed between high banks. A sexton and a watchman stood by a granite vault, the heavy door of which they had opened with a large key. Hard by were some gardeners and labourers, and also a crowd of curiosity-seekers who had come to witness the last sad rites. Presently a funeral procession appeared. The hearse stopped near the open vault, over the door of which stood out the name of CORTLANDT, and the accompanying minister said a short prayer, while all present uncovered their heads. After this the coffin was borne within and set at rest upon a slab, among many generations of Cortlandts. In the hearts of the relatives and friends was genuine sorrow, but the curiosity-seekers went their way and gave little thought. "To-morrow will be like to-day," they said, "and more great men will die."

Then came another change of scene, though it

was comparatively slight. The sun slowly sank beyond the farther bank of the broad river, and the moon and stars shone softly on the gravestones and crosses. Two gardeners smoked their short clay pipes on a bench before the Cortlandt vault, and talked in a slow manner.

"He was a great man," said one, "and if his soul blooms like the flowers on his grave, he must be in paradise, which we know is a finer park than this."

"He was expert for the Government when the earth's axis was set right," said the second gardener, "and he must have been a scholar, for his calculations have all come true. He was one of the first three men to visit the other planets, while the obituaries in the papers say his history will be read hereafter like the books of Caesar. After burying all these great people, I sometimes wish I could do the same for myself, for the people I bury seem to be remembered." After this they relapsed into their meditations, the silence being broken only by an occasional murmur from the river's steady flow.

Hereupon the voyagers found they were once

more in the cave. The fire had burned low, and the dawn was already in the east. Cortlandt wiped his forehead, shivered, and looked extremely pale.

"Thank Heaven," he cried, "we cannot ordinarily foresee our end; for but few would attain their predestined ending could they see it in advance. May the veil not again be raised, lest I faint before it! I looked in vain for my soul," he continued, but could see it nowhere."

"The souls of those dying young," replied the spirit, "sometimes wish to hover near their ashes as if regretting an unfinished life, or the opportunities that have departed; but those dying after middle age are usually glad to be free from their bodies, and seldom think of them again."

"I shall append the lines now in my head to my history," said Cortlandt, "that where it goes they may go also. They can scarcely fail to be instructive as the conclusions of a man who has seen beyond his grave." Whereupon be wrote a stanza in his note-book, and closed it without showing his companions what he had written.

"May they do all the good you hope, and much more!" replied the spirit, "for the reward in the

resurrection morning will vastly exceed all your labours now.

"O, my friends," the spirit continued most earnestly, addressing the three, "are you prepared for your death-beds? When your eyes glaze in their last sleep, and you lose that temporal world and what you perhaps considered all, as in a haze, your dim vision will then be displaced by the true creation that will be eternal. Your unattained ambitions, your hopes, and your ideals will be swallowed in the grave. Your works will secure you a place in history, and many will remember your names until, in time, oblivion covers your memory as the grass conceals your tombs. Are you prepared for the time when your eyes become blind, and your trusted senses fail? Your sorrowing friends will mourn, and the flags of your clubs will fly at half-mast, but no earthly thing can help you then. In what condition will the resurrection morning find you, when your sins of neglect and commission plead for vengeance, as Abel's blood from the ground? After that there can be no change. The classification, as I have already told you, is now going on; it will then be finished."

"We are the most utterly wretched sinners!" cried Ayrault. "Show us how we can be saved."

"As an inhabitant of spirit-land, I will give you worldly counsel," replied the bishop. "During my earthly administration, as I told you, people came from far to hear me preach. This was because I had eloquence and earnestness, both gifts of God. But I was a miserably weak sinner myself. That which I would, I did not, and that which I would not that I did; and I often prayed my congregation to follow my sermons rather than my ways. I seemed to do my followers good, and Daniel thus commends my way in his last chapter: `They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars forever and ever,' and the explanation is clear. There is no surer way of learning than trying to teach. In teaching my several flocks I was also improved myself. I was sown in weakness, but was raised in power, strength being made perfect in weakness. Therefore improve your fellows, though yourself you cannot raise. The knowledge that you have sent many souls to heaven, though you are yourself a castaway, will give you unspeakable joy, and place you in heaven wherever you may be. Yet remember

this: none of us can win heaven; salvation is the gift of God. I have said as much now as you can remember. Farewell. Improve time while you can. Fear God and keep His commandments. This is the whole duty of man."

So saying, the spirit vanished in a cloud that for a time emitted light.

"I am not surprised," said Bearwarden, "that people took long journeys to hear him. I would do so myself."

"I have never had much fear of death," said Cortlandt, "but the mere thought of it now makes my knees shake, and fills my heart with dread. I thought I saw the most hateful forms about my coffin, and imagined that they might be the personification of doubt, coldness, and my other shortcomings, which had come perhaps from sympathy, in invisible form. I was almost afraid to ask the spirit for the explanation."

"I saw them also," replied Bearwarden, "but took them to be swarms of microbes waiting to destroy your body, or perhaps trying in vain to penetrate your hermetically scaled coffin."

Cortlandt seemed much upset, and spent the rest

of the day in writing out the facts and trying to assign a cause. Towards evening Bearwarden, who had recovered his spirits, prepared supper, after which they sat in the entrance to the cave.

3.10. AYRAULT.

As the, night became darker they caught sight of the earth again, shining very faintly, and in his mind's eye Ayrault saw his sweetheart, and the old, old repining that, since reason and love began, has been in men's minds, came upon him and almost crushed him. Without saying anything to his companions, Ayrault left the cave, and, passing through the grove in which the spirit had paid them his second visit, went slowly to the top of the hill about half a mile off, that he might the more easily gaze at the faint star on which he could picture Sylvia.

"Ah!" he said to himself, on reaching the summit, "I will stay here till the earth rises higher, and when it is far above me I will gaze at it as at heaven."

Accordingly, he lay down with his head on a mound of sod, and watched the familiar planet.

"We were born too soon," he soliloquized; "for had Sylvia and I but lived in the spiritual age foretold by the bishop, we might have held communion, while now our spirits, no matter how much in love, are separated absolutely by a mere matter of distance. It is a mockery to see Sylvia's dwelling-place, and feel that she is beyond my vision. O that, in the absence of something better, my poor imperfect eyes could be transformed into those of an eagle, but with a million times the power! for though I know that with these senses I shall see the resurrection, and hear the last trump, that is but prospective, while now is the time I long for sight."

On the plain he had left he saw his friends' camp-fire, while on the other side of his elevation was a valley in which the insects chirped sharply, and through which ran a stream. Feeling a desire for solitude and to be as far removed as possible, he arose and descended towards the water. Though the autumn, where they found themselves, was well advanced, this night was warm, and the rings formed a great arch above his head. Near the stream the frogs croaked happily, as if unmindful of the long very long Saturnian winter; for though they were

removed but about ten degrees from the equator, the sun was so remote and the axis of the planet so inclined that it was unlikely these individual frogs would see another summer, though they might live again, in a sense, in their descendants. The insects also would soon be frozen and stiff, and the tall, graceful lilies that still clung to life would be withered and dead. The trees, as if weeping at the evanescence of the life around them, shed their leaves at the faintest breeze. These fluttered to the ground, or, falling into the tranquil stream, were carried away by it, and passed from sight. Ayrault stood musing and regretting the necessity of such general death. "But," he thought, "I would rather die than lose my love; for then I should have had the taste of bliss without its fulfilment, and should be worse off than dead. Love gilds the commonplace, and deifies all it touches. Love survives the winter, and in my present frame of mind I should prefer earth and cold with it to heaven and spring. Oh, why is my soul so clogged by my body?"

A pillar of stone standing near him was suddenly shattered, and the bishop stood where it had been.

"Because," said the spirit, answering his thought, "it has not yet power to be free."

"Can a man's soul not rise till his body is dead? asked Ayrault.

The spirit hesitated.

"Oh, tell me," pleaded Ayrault. "If I could see the girl to whom I am engaged, for but a moment, could be convinced that she loves me still, my mind would be at rest. Free my soul or spirit, or whatever it is, from this body, that I may traverse intervening space and be with her."

"You will discover the way for yourself in time," said the spirit.

"I know I shall at the last day, in the resurrection, when I am no longer in the flesh. Then I shall have no need of your aid; for we, know that in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels of God in heaven. It is while I am mortal, and love as mortals do, that I wish to see my promised bride. A spirit may have other joys, and perhaps higher; but you who have lived in the world and loved, show me that which is now my heart's desire. You have shown us the tomb in which Cortlandt will

lie buried; now help me to go to one who is still alive."

"I pray that God will grant you this," said the spirit, "and make me His instrument, for I see the depth of your distress." Saying which, he vanished, leaving no trace in his departure except that the pillar of Stone returned to its place.

With this rather vague hope, Ayrault set off to rejoin his companions, for he felt the need of human sympathy. Saturn's rapid rotation had brought the earth almost to the zenith, the little point shining with the unmistakably steady ray of a planet. Huge bats fluttered about him, and the great cloud-masses swept across the sky, being part of Saturn's ceaseless whirl. He found he was in a hypnotic or spiritualistic state, for it was not necessary for him to have his eyes open to know where he was. In passing one of the pools they had noticed, he observed that the upper and previously invisible liquid had the bright colour of gold, and about it rested a group of figures enveloped in light.

"Why do you look so sad?" they asked. "You are in that abode of departed spirits known as paradise, and should be happy."

"I suppose I should be happy, were I here as you are, as the reward of merit," he replied. "But I am still in the flesh, and as such am subject to its cares."

"You are about to have an experience," said another speaker. "This day your doubts will be at rest, for before another sunset you will know more of the woman you love."

The intensity of the spiritualistic influence here somewhat weakened, for he partially lost sight of the luminous figures, and could no longer hear what they said. His heart was in his month as he walked, and he felt like a man about to set out on his honeymoon, or like a bride who knows not whether to laugh or to cry. An indescribable exhilaration was constantly present.

"I wonder," thought he, "if a caterpillar has these sensations before becoming a butterfly? Though I return to the rock from which I sprang, I believe I shall be with Sylvia to-day."

Footprints formed in the soft ground all around him, and the air was filled with spots of phosphorescent light that coincided with the relative positions of the brains, hearts, and eyes of human beings. These surrounded and often preceded him, as though leading

him on, while the most heavenly anthems filled the air and the vault of the sky.

"I believe," he thought, with bounding heart, that I shall be initiated into the mysteries of space this night."

At times he could hear even the words of the choruses ringing in his ears, though at others he thought the effect was altogether in his mind.

"Oh, for a proof," he prayed, "that no sane man can doubt! My faith is implicit in the bishop and the vision, and I feel that in some way I shall return to earth ere the close of another day, for I know I am awake, and that this is no dream."

A fire burned in the mouth of the cave, within which Bearwarden and Cortlandt lay sleeping. The specks of mica in the rocks reflected its light, but in addition to this a diffused phosphorescence filled the place, and the large sod-covered stones they used for pillows emitted purple and dark red flames.

"Is that you, Dick?" asked Bearwarden, awaking and groping about. "We built up the fire so that you should find the camp, but it seems to have gone down." Saying which, he struck a match, whereupon Ayrault ceased to see the phosphorescence or

bluish light. At that moment a peal of thunder awakened Cortlandt, who sat up and rubbed his eyes.

"I think," said Ayrault, "I will go to the Callisto and get our mackintoshes before the rain sets in." Whereupon he left his companions, who were soon again fast asleep.

The sky had suddenly become filled with clouds, and Ayrault hastened towards the Callisto, intending to remain there, if necessary, until the storm was over. For about twenty minutes he hurried on through the growing darkness, stopping once on high ground to make sure of his bearings, and he had covered more than half the distance when the rain came on in a flood, accompanied by brilliant lightning. Seeing the huge, hollow trunk of a fallen tree near, and not wishing to be wet through, Ayrault fired several solid shots from his revolver into the cavity, to drive out any wild animals there might be inside, and then hurriedly crawled in, feet first. He next drew in his head, and was congratulating himself on his snug retreat, when the sky became lurid with a flash of lightning, then his head dropped forward, and he was unconscious.

3.11. DREAMLAND TO SHADOWLAND.

As Ayrault's consciousness returned, he fancied he heard music. Though distant, it was distinct, and seemed to ring from the ether of space. Occasionally it sounded even more remote, but it was rhythmical and continuous, inspiring and stirring him as nothing that he had ever heard before. Finally, it was overcome by the more vivid impressions upon his other senses, and he found himself walking in the streets of his native city. It was spring, and the trees were white with buds. The long shadows of the late afternoon stretched across the way, but the clear sky gave indication of prolonged twilight, and the air was warm and balmy. Nature was filled with life, and seemed to be proclaiming that the cold was past.

As he moved along the street he met a funeral procession.

"What a pity," he thought, "a man should die, with summer so near at hand!"

He was also surprised at the keenness of his sight; for, inclosed in each man's body, he saw the outline of his soul. But the dead man's body was empty, like a cage without a bird. He also read the thoughts in their minds.

"Now," said a large man in the carriage next the hearse, I may win her, since she is a widow."

The widow herself kept thinking: "Would it had been I! His life was essential to the children, while I should scarcely have been missed. I wish I had no duties here, and might follow him now."

While pondering on these things, he reached Sylvia's house, and went into the little room in which he had so often seen her. The warm southwesterly breeze blew through the open windows, and far beyond Central Park the approaching sunset promised to be beautiful. The table was covered with flowers, and though he had often seen that variety, he had never before noticed the marvellous combinations of colours, while the room was filled

with a thousand delicious perfumes. The thrush hanging in the window sang divinely, and in a silver frame he saw a likeness of himself.

"I have always loved this room," he thought, but it seems to me now like heaven."

He sat down in an arm-chair from force of habit, to await his fiancee.

"Oh, for a walk with Sylvia by twilight!" his thoughts ran on, "for she need not be at home again till after seven."

Presently he heard the soft rustle of her dress, and rose to meet her. Though she looked in his direction, she did not seem to see him, and walked past him to the window. She was the picture of loveliness silhouetted against the sky. He went towards her, and gazed into her deep-sea eyes, which had a far-away expression. She turned, went gracefully to the mantelpiece, and took a photograph of herself from behind the clock. On its back Ayrault had scrawled a boyish verse composed by himself, which ran:

"My divine, most ideal Sylvia,
O vision, with eyes so blue,
'Tis in the highest degree consequential,
To my existence in fact essential,
That I should be loved by you."

As she read and reread those lines, with his whole soul he yearned to have her look at him. He watched the colour come and go in her clear, bright complexion, and was rejoiced to see in her the personification of activity and health. Beneath his own effusion on the photograph he saw something written in pencil, in the hand he knew so well:

"Did you but know how I love you,
No more silly things would you ask.
With my whole heart and soul I adore you —
Idiot! goose! bombast!"

And as she glanced at it, these thoughts crossed her mind: "I shall never call you such names again. How much I shall have to tell you! It is provoking that you stay away so long."

He came still nearer — so near, in fact, that he could hear the beating of her heart — but she still seemed entirely unconscious of his presence. Losing his reserve and self-control, he impulsively grasped at her hands, then fell on his knees, and then, dumfounded, struggled to his feet. Her hands seemed to slip through his; he was not able to touch her, and she was still unaware of his presence.

Suddenly a whole flood of light and the truth

burst upon him. He had passed painlessly and unconsciously from the dreamland of Saturn to the shadowland of eternity. The mystery was solved. Like the dead bishop, he had become a free spirit. His prayer was answered, and his body, struck by lightning, lay far away on that great ringed planet. How he longed to take in his arms the girl who had promised herself to him, and who, he now saw, loved him with her whole heart; but he was only an immaterial spirit, lighter even than the ether of space, and the unchangeable laws of the universe seemed to him but the irony of fate. As a spirit, he was intangible and invisible to those in the flesh, and likewise they were beyond his control. The tragedy of life then dawned upon him, and the awful results of death made themselves felt. He glanced at Sylvia. On coming in she had looked radiantly happy; now she seemed depressed, and even the bird stopped singing.

"Oh," he thought, "could I but return to life for one hour, to tell her how incessantly she has been in my thoughts, and how I love her! Death, to the aged, is no loss — in fact, a blessing — but now!" and he sobbed mentally in the anguish of his soul. If he could but communicate with her, he thought; but he

remembered what the departed bishop had said, that it would take most men centuries to do this, and that others could never learn. By that time she, too, would be dead, perhaps having been the wife of some one else, and he felt a sense of jealousy even beyond the grave. Throwing himself upon a rug on the floor, in a paroxysm of distress, he gazed at Sylvia.

"Oh, horrible mockery!" he thought, thinking of the spirit. "He gave me worse than a stone when I asked for bread; for, in place of freedom, he sent me death. Could I but be alive again for a few moments!" But, with a bitter smile, he again remembered the words of the bishop, "What would a soul in hell not give for but one hour on earth?"

Sylvia had seated herself on a small sofa, on which, and next to her, he had so often sat. Her gentle eyes had a thoughtful look, while her face was the personification of intelligence and beauty. She occasionally glanced at his photograph, which she held in her hand.

"Sylvia, Sylvia!" he suddenly cried, rising to his knees at her feet. "I love, I adore you! It was my longing to be with you that brought me here. I

know you can neither see nor hear me, but cannot your soul commune with mine?"

"Is Dick here?" cried Sylvia, becoming deadly pale and getting up, "or am I losing my reason?"

Seeing that she was distressed by the power of his mind, Ayrault once more sank to the floor, burying his face in his hands.

Unable to endure this longer, and feeling as if his heart must break, he rushed out into the street, wishing he might soothe his anguish with a hypodermic injection of morphine, and that he had a body with which to divert and suppress his soul.

Night had fallen, and the electric lamps cast their white rays on the ground, while the stars overhead shone in their eternal serenity and calm. Then was it once more brought home to him that he was a spirit, for darkness and light were alike, and he felt the beginning of that sense of prescience of which the bishop had spoken. Passing through the houses of some of the clubs to which he belonged, he saw his name still upon the list of members, and then he went to the places of amusement he knew so well. On all sides were familiar faces, but what interested him most was the great division incessantly going on.

Here were jolly people enjoying life and playing cards, who, his foresight showed him, would in less than a year be under ground — like Mercutio, in "Romeo and Juliet," to-day known as merry fellows, who to-morrow would be grave men.

While his eyes beheld the sun, he had imagined the air felt warm and balmy. He now saw that this had been a hallucination, for he was chilled through and through. He also perceived that be cast no shadow, and that no one observed his presence. He, on the other hand, saw not only the air as it entered and left his friends' lungs, but also the substance of their brains, and the seeds of disease and death, whose presence they themselves did not even suspect, and the seventy-five per cent of water in their bodies, making them appear like sacks of liquid. In some he saw the germs of consumption; in others, affections of the heart. In all, he saw the incessant struggle between the healthy blood-cells and the malignant, omnipresent bacilli that the cells were trying to overcome. Many men and women he saw were in love, and he could tell what all were about to do. Oh, the secrets that were revealed, while the motives for acts were now laid bare that till then he had misunder

stood! He had often heard the old saying, that if every person in a ball-room could read the thoughts of the rest, the ball would seem a travesty on enjoyment, rather than real pleasure, and now he perceived its force. He also noticed that many were better than he had supposed, and were trying, in a blundering but persevering way, to obey their consciences. He saw some unselfish thoughts and acts. Many things that he had attributed to irresolution or inconsistency, he perceived were in reality self-sacrifice. He went on in frantic disquiet, distance no longer being of consequence, and in his roaming chanced to pass through the graveyard in which many generations of his ancestors lay buried. Within the leaden coffins he saw the cold remains; some well preserved, others but handfuls of dust.

"Tell me, O my progenitors," he cried, "you whose blood till this morning flowed in my veins, is there not some way by which I, as a spirit, can commune with the material world? I have always admired your judgment and wisdom, and you have all been in Shadowland longer than I. Give me, I pray you, some ancestral advice."

The only sound in answer was the hum of the

insects that filled the evening air. The moonlight shone softly, but in a ghastly way, on the marble crosses of his vault and those around, and he felt an unspeakable sadness within this abode of the dead. "How many unfinished lives," he thought, "have ended beneath these sods! Unimproved talents here are buried in the ground. Unattained ambitions, and those who died before their time; those who tried, in a half-hearted way, to improve their opportunities, and accomplished something, and those who neglected them, and did still less — all are together here, the just with the unjust, though it be for the last time. The grave absorbs their bodies and ends their probationary record, from which there is no appeal."

Near by were some open graves, ready to receive their occupants, while a little farther on he recognized the Cortlandt mausoleum, looking exactly as when shown him, through his second sight, by the spirit on the previous day.

From the graves filled recently, and from many others, rose threads of coloured matter, in the form of gases, the forerunners of miasma. He now perceived shadowy figures flitting about on the ground and in the air, from whose eyes poured streams of

immaterial tears. Their brains, hearts, and vertebral columns were the parts most easily seen, and they were filled with an inextinguishable anguish and sorrow that from its very intensity made itself seen as a blue flame. The ruffles and knickerbockers in which some of these were attired, evidently by the effects of the thoughts in their minds, doubtless from force of habit from what they had worn on earth while alive, showed that they had been dead at least two hundred years. Ayrault also now found himself in street clothes, although when in his clubs he had worn a dress suit.

"Tell me, fellow-spirits," he said, addressing them, "how can I communicate with one that is still alive?"

They looked at him with moist eyes, but answered not a word.

"I attributed the misery in my heart," thought Ayrault, "entirely to the distress at losing Sylvia, which God knows is enough; but though I suspected it before, I now see, by my companions, that I am in the depths of hell."

3.12. SHEOL.

Failing to find words to convey his thoughts, he threw himself into an open grave, praying that the earth might hide his soul, as he had supposed it some day would hide his body. But the ground was like crystal, and he saw the white bones in the graves all around him. Unable to endure these surroundings longer, he rushed back to his old haunts, where he knew he should find the friends of his youth. He did not pause to go by the usual way, but passed, without stopping, through walls and buildings. Soon he beheld the familiar scene, and heard his own name mentioned. But there was no comfort here, and what he had seen of old was but an incident to what he gazed on now. Praying with his whole heart that he might make himself heard, he stepped upon a foot-stool, and cried:

"Your bodies are decaying before me. You are burying your talents in the ground. We must all stand for final sentence at the last day, mortals and spirits alike — there is not a shadow of a shade of doubt. Your every thought will be known, and for every evil deed and every idle word God will bring us into judgment. The angel of death is among you and at work in your very midst. Are you prepared to receive him? He has already killed my body, and now that I can never die I wish there was a grave for my soul. I was reassured by a vision that told me I was safe, but either it was a hallucination, or I have been betrayed by some spirit. Last night I still lived, and my body obeyed my will. Since then I have experienced death, and with the resulting increased knowledge comes the loss of all hope, with keener pangs than I supposed could exist. Oh, that I had now their opportunities, that I might write a thesis that should live forever, and save millions of souls from the anguish of mine! Inoculate your mortal bodies with the germs of faith and mutual love, in a stronger degree than they dwelt in me, lest you lose the life above."

But no one heard him, and he preached in vain.

He again rushed forth, and, after a half-involuntary effort, found himself in the street before his loved one's home. Scarcely knowing why, except that it had become nature to wish to be near her, he stood for a long time opposite her dwelling.

"O house!" he cried, "inanimate object that can yet enthral me so, I stand before your cold front as a suppliant from a very distant realm; yet in my sadness I am colder than your stones, more alone than in a desolate place. She that dwells within you holds my love. I long for her shadow or the sound of her step. I am more wretchedly in love than ever — I, an impotent, invisible spirit. Must I bear this sorrow in addition to my others, in my fruitless search for rest? My life will be a waking nightmare, most bitter irony of fate."

The trees swayed above his head, and the moon, in its last quarter, looked dreamily at him.

"Ah," thought Ayrault, "could I but sleep and be happy! Drowsiness and weariness, fatigue's grasp is on me; or may Sylvia's nearness soothe, as her voice has brought me calm! Quiet I may some day enjoy, but slumber again, never! I see that souls in hades must ever have their misdeeds before them.

Happy man in this world, the repentant's sins are forgiven! You lose your care in sleep. Somnolence and drowsiness — balm of aching hearts, angels of mercy! Mortals, how blessed! until you die, God sends you this rest. When I recall summer evenings with Sylvia, while gentle zephyrs fanned our brows, I would change Pope's famous line to `Man never is, but always has been blessed.'"

A clock in a church-steeple now struck three, the sound ringing through the still night air.

"It will soon be time for ghosts to go," thought Ayrault. "I must not haunt her dwelling."

There was a light in Sylvia's study, and Ayrault remained meditatively gazing at it.

"Happy lamp," he thought, "to shed your light on one so fair! She can see you, and you shine, for her. You are better off than I. Would that her soul might shine for me, as your light shines for her! The light of my life has departed. O that the darkness were complete! I am dead," his thoughts ran on, and when the privilege — bitter word! — that permits me to remain here has expired, I must doubtless return to Saturn, and there in purgatory work out my probation. But what comfort is it that

a few centuries hence I may be able to revisit my native earth? —

The flowers will bloom in the morning light,
And the lark salute the sun,
The earth will continue to roll through space,
And I may be nearer my final grace,
But Sylvia's life-thread will be spun.

"Even Sylvia's house will be a heap of ruins, or its place will be taken by something else. If I had Sylvia, I should care for nothing; as I have lost her, even this sight, though sweet, must always bring regret. I wish, at all events, I might see Sylvia, if only with these spirit-eyes, since, as a mortal, she may never gladden my sight again."

To his surprise, he now perceived that he could see, notwithstanding the drawn shades. Sylvia was at her writing-desk, in a light-coloured wrapper. She sat there resting her head on her hand, looking thoughtful but worried. Though it was so late, she had not retired. The thrush that Ayrault had often in life admired, and that she had for some reason brought up-stairs, was silent and asleep.

"Happy bird!" he said, "you obtain rest and forgetfulness on covering your head; but what wing

can cover my soul? I used to wish I might flutter towards heaven on natural wings like you, little thrush. Now I can, indeed, outfly you. But whatever I do I'm unhappy, and wherever I go I'm in hell. What is man in his helpless, first spiritual state? He is but a flower, and withers soon. Had I, like the bishop, been less blind, and obeyed my conscience clear, I might have returned to my native earth while Sylvia still sojourns here; and coming thus by virtue of development, I should be able to commune with her.

"What is life?" he continued. "In the retrospect, nothing. It seems to me already as but an infinitesimal point. Things that engrossed me, and seemed of such moment, that overshadowed the duty of obeying my conscience — what were they, and where? Ah, where? They endured but a moment. Reality and evanescence — evanescence and reality."

The light in Sylvia's room was out now, and in the east he beheld the dawn. The ubiquitous grey which he saw at night was invaded by streams of glorious crimson and blue that reached far up into the sky. He gazed at the spectacle, and then once more at that house in which his love was centred.

"Would I might be her guardian angel, to guide her in the right and keep her from all harm! Sleep on, Sylvia. Sweet one, sleep. Yon stars fade beside your eyes. Your thoughts and your soul are fairer far than the east in this day's sunrise. I know what I have lost. Ah, desolating knowledge! for I have read Sylvia's heart, and know I was loved as truly as I loved. When Bearwarden and Cortlandt break her the news — ah, God! will she live, and do they yet know I am dead?"

Again came that spasm to shed spirit tears, and had he not known it impossible he would have thought his heart must break.

The birds twittered, and the light grew, but Ayrault lay with his face upon the ground. Finally the spirit of unrest drove him on. He passed the barred door of his own house, through which he had entered so often. It was unchanged, but seemed deserted. Next, he went to the water-front, where he had left his yacht. Invisibly and sadly he stood upon her upper deck, and gazed at the levers, in response to his touch on which the craft had cleft the waves, reversed, or turned like a thing of life.

"'Twas a pretty toy," he mused, "and many

hours of joy have I had as I floated through life on board of her."

As he moped along he beheld two unkempt Italians having a piano-organ and a violin. The music was not fine, but it touched a chord in Ayrault's breast, for he had waltzed with Sylvia to that air, and it made his heart ache.

"Oh, the acuteness of my distress," he cried, "the utter depth of my sorrow! Can I have no peace in death, no oblivion in the grave? I am reminded of my blighted, hopeless love in all kinds of unexpected ways, by unforeseen trifles. Oh, would I might, indeed, die! May obliteration be my deliverer!"

"Poor fellows," he continued, glancing at the Italians, for he perceived that neither of the players was happy; the pianist was avaricious, while the violinist's natural and habitual jealousy destroyed his peace of mind.

"Unhappiness seems the common lot," thought Ayrault. "Earth cannot give that joy for which we sigh. Poor fellows! though you rack my ears and distress my heart, I cannot help you now."

3.13. THE PRIEST'S SERMON.

It being the first day of the week, the morning air was filled with chimes from many steeples.

"Divine service always comforted in life," thought Ayrault, "perchance it may do so now, when I have reached the state for which it tried to prepare me."

Accordingly, he moved on with the throng, and soon was ascending the heights of Morningside Park, after which, he entered the cathedral. The priest whose voice had so often thrilled him stood at his post in his surplice, and the choir had finished the processional hymn. During the responses in the litany, and between the commandments, while the congregation and the choir sang, he heard their natural voices as of old ascending to the vaulted roof and arrested there. He now also heard their spiritual

voices resulting from the earnestness of their prayers. These were rung through the vaster vault of space, arousing a spiritual echo beyond the constellations and the nebulae. The service, which was that of the Protestant Episcopal Church, touched him as deeply as usual, after which the rector ascended the steps to the pulpit.

"The text, this morning," he began, "is from the eighth chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, at the eighteenth verse: `For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that shall be revealed in us.' Let us suppose that you or I, brethren, should become a free and disembodied spirit. A minute vein in the brain bursts, or a clot forms in the heart. It may be a mere trifle, some unexpected thing, yet the career in the flesh is ended, the eternal life of the liberated spirit begun. The soul slips from earth's grasp, as air from our fingers, and finds itself in the frigid, boundless void of space. Yet, through some longing this soul might rejoin us, and, though invisible, might hear the church-bells ring, and long to recall some one of the many bright Sunday mornings spent here on earth. Has a direful misfortune be

fallen this brother, or has a slave been set free? Let us suppose for a moment that the first has occurred. `Vanity of vanities,' said the old preacher. `Calamity of calamities,' says the new. That soul's probationary period is ended; his record, on which he must go, is forever made. He has been in the flesh, let us say, one, two, three or four score years; before him are the countless aeons of eternity. He may have had a reasonably satisfactory life, from his point of view, and been fairly successful in stilling conscience. That still, small voice doubtless spoke pretty sharply at first, but after a while it rarely troubled him, and in the end it spoke not at all. He may, in a way, have enjoyed life and the beauties of nature. He has seen the fresh leaves come and go, but he forgot the moral, that be himself was but a leaf, and that, as they all dropped to earth to make more soil, his ashes must also return to the ground. But his soul, friends and brethren, what becomes of that? Ah! it is the study of this question that moistens our eyes with tears. No evil man is really happy here, and what must be his suffering in the cold, cold land of spirits? No slumber or forgetfulness can ease his lot in hades, and after his condemnation at the last judgment he must forever face the unsoftened realities of eternity. No evil thing or thought can find lodgment in heaven. If it could, heaven would not be a happy place; neither can any man improve in the abyss of hell. As the horizon gradually darkens, and this soul recedes from God, the time spent in the flesh must come to seem the most infinitesimal moment, more evanescent than the tick of a clock. It seems dreadful that for such short misdoings a soul should suffer so long, but no man can be saved in spite of himself. He had the opportunities — and the knowledge of this must give a soul the most acute pang.

"In Revelation, xx, 6, we find these words, `Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power.' I have often asked myself, May not this mean that those with a bad record in the general resurrection after a time cease to exist, since all suffer one death at the close of their period here?

This is somewhat suggested by Proverbs, xii, 28,. `In the way of righteousness is life, and in the pathway thereof there is no death.' This might limit the everlasting damnation, so often repeated elsewhere,

to the lives of the condemned, since to them, in a sense, it would be everlasting.

"Let us now turn to the bright picture — the soul that has weathered the storms of life and has reached the haven of rest. The struggles, temptations, and trials overcome, have done their work of refining with a rapidity that could not have been equalled in any other way, and though, perhaps, very imperfect still, the journey is ever on. The reward is tenfold, yet in proportion to what this soul has done, for we know that the servant who best used his ten talents was made ruler over ten cities, while he that increased his five talents by five received five; and the Saviour in whom he trusted, by whose aid he made his fight, stands ready to receive him, saying, `Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.'

"As the dark, earthly background recedes, the clouds break and the glorious light appears, the contrast heightening the ever-unfolding and increasing delights, which are as great as the recipients have power to enjoy, since these righteous souls receive their rewards in proportion to the weight of the crosses that they have borne in the right spirit. These souls are a joy to their Creator, and are the heirs of

Him in heaven. The ceaseless, sleepless activity that must obtain in both paradise and hades, and that must make the hearts of the godless grow faint at the contemplation, is also a boundless promise to those who have Him who is all in all.

"Where is now thy Saviour? where is now thy God? the unjust man has asked in his heart when he saw his just neighbour struggling and unsuccessful. Both the righteous and the unrighteous man are dead. The one has found his Saviour, the other is yearly losing God. What is the suffering of the present momentary time, eased as it is by God's mercy and presence, compared with the glories that await us? What would it be if our lives here were filled with nothing else, as ye know that your labour is not vain in the Lord? Time and eternity — the finite and the infinite. Death was, indeed, a deliverer, and the sunset of the body is the sunrise of the soul."

The priest held himself erect as a soldier while delivering this sermon, making the great cathedral ring with his earnest and solemn voice, while Ayrault, as a spirit, saw how absolutely he meant and believed every word that he said.

Nearly all the members of the congregation were

moved — some more, some less than they appeared. After the benediction they rapidly dispersed, carrying in their hearts the germs he had sown; but whether these would bear fruit or wither, time alone could show.

Ayrault had noticed Sylvia's father and mother in church, but Sylvia herself was not there, and he was distressed to think she might be ill.

"Why," pondered Ayrault, "am I so unhappy? I was baptized, confirmed, and have taken the sacrament. I have always had an unshaken faith, and, though often unsuccessful, have striven to obey my conscience. The spirits also on Saturn kept saying I should be happy. Now, did this mean it was incumbent upon me to rejoice, because of some blessing I already had, and did not appreciate, or did their prescience show them some prospective happiness I was to enjoy? The visions also of Violet, the angel, and the lily, which I believed, and still believe, were no mere empty fancies, should have given me the most unspeakable joy. It may be a mistake to apply earthly logic to heavenly things, but the fundamental laws of science cannot change.

"Why am I so unhappy?" he continued, returning

to his original question. "The visions gave promise of special grace, perhaps some special favour. True, my prayer to see Sylvia was heard, but, considering the sacrifice, this has been no blessing. The request cannot have been wrong in itself, and as for the manner, there was no arrogance in my heart. I asked as a mortal, as a man of but finite understanding, for what concerned me most. Why, oh why, so wretched?

3.14. HIC ILLE JACET.

At daybreak the thunder-shower passed off, but was followed by a cold, drenching rain. Supposing Ayrault had remained in the Callisto, Bearwarden and Cortlandt did not feel anxious, and, not wishing to be wet through, remained in the cave, keeping up a good fire with the wood they had collected. Towards evening a cold wind came up, and, thinking this might clear the air, they ventured out, but, finding the ground saturated, and that the rain was again beginning to fall, they returned to shelter, prepared a dinner of canned meat, and made themselves as comfortable as possible for the night.

"I am surprised," said Cortlandt, "that Dick did not try to return to us, since he had the mackintoshes."

"I dare say he did try," replied Bearwarden, "but

finding the course inundated, and knowing we should not need the mackintoshes if we remained under cover, decided to put back. The Callisto is, of course, as safe as a church."

"I hope," said Cortlandt, "no harm has come to him on the way. It will be a weight off my mind to see him safely with us."

"Should he not turn up in the morning," replied Bearwarden, we must begin a search for him bright and early."

Making up the fire as near the entrance of the cave as they could find a dry place, so that Ayrault should see it if he attempted to return during the night, they piled on wood, and talked of their recent experiences.

"However unwilling I was," said Cortlandt, "to believe my senses, which I felt were misleading me, I can no longer doubt the reality of that spirit bishop, or the truth of what be says. When you look at the question dispassionately, it is what you might logically expect. In my desire to disprove what is to us supernatural, I tried to create mentally a system that would be a substitute for the one he described, but could evolve nothing that so perfectly filled the requirements,

or that was so simple. Nothing seems more natural than that man, having been evolved from stone, should continue his ascent till he discards material altogether. The metamorphism is more striking in the first change than in the second. Granted that the soul is immaterial, and that it leaves the body after death, what is there to keep it on earth? Gravitation cannot affect it. What is more likely than that it is left behind by the earth in its orbit, or that it continues its forward motion, but in a straight line, till, reaching the paths of the greater planets, it is drawn to them by some affinity or attraction that the earth does not possess, and that the souls held in that manner remain here on probation, developing like young animals or children, till, by gradually acquired power, resulting from their wills, they are able to rise again into space, to revisit the earth, and in time to explore the universe? It might easily come about that, by some explainable sympathy, the infant good souls are drawn to this planet, while the condemned pass on to Cassandra, which holds them by some property peculiar to itself, until perhaps they, too, by virtue of their wills, acquire new power, unless involution sets in and they lose what they have. The simplicity of the thing is what surprises me now, and that for ages philosophers have been racking their brains with every conceivable fancy, when, by simply extending and following natural laws, they could discern the whole."

"It is the old story," said Bearwarden, "of Columbus and the egg. Schopenhouer and his predecessors appear to have tried every idea but the right one, and even Darwin and Huxley fell short in their reasoning, because they tried to obtain more or less than four by putting two with two."

Thus they sat and talked while the night wore on. Neither thought of sleeping, hoping all the while that Ayrault might walk in as he had the night before.

At last the dawn began to tint the east, and the growing light showed them that the storm had passed. The upper strata of Saturn's atmosphere being filled with infinitesimal particles of dust, as a result of its numerous volcanoes, the conditions were highly favourable to beautiful sunrises and sunsets. Soon coloured streaks extended far into the sky, and though they knew that when the sun's disc appeared it would seem small, it filled the almost

boundless eastern horizon with the most variegated and gorgeous hues.

Turning away from the welcome sight — for their minds were ill at ease — they found the light strong enough for their search to begin. Writing on a sheet of paper, in a large hand, "Have gone to the Callisto to look for you; shall afterwards return here, they pinned this in a conspicuous place and set out due west, keeping about a hundred yards apart. The ground was wet and slippery, but overhead all was clear, and the sun soon shone brightly. Looking to right and left, and occasionally shouting and discharging their revolvers, they went on for half an hour.

"I have his tracks," called Bearwarden, and Cortlandt hastened to join him.

In the soft ground, sure enough, they saw Ayrault's footprints, and, from the distance between them, concluded that he must have been running or walking very fast; but the rain had washed down the edges of the incision. The trail ascended a gentle slope, where they lost it; but on reaching the summit they saw it again with the feet together, as though Ayrault had paused, and about it were many

other impressions with the feet turned in, as if the walkers or standers had surrounded Ayrault, who was in the centre.

"I hope," said Cortlandt, "these are nothing more than the footprints we have seen formed about ourselves."

"See," said Bearwarden, "Dick's trail goes on, and the others vanish. They cannot have been made by savages or Indians, for they seem to have had weight only while standing."

They then resumed their march, firing a revolver shot at intervals of a minute. Suddenly they came upon a tall, straight tree, uprooted by the wind and lying diagonally across their path. Following with their eyes the direction in which it lay, they saw a large, hollow trunk, with the bark stripped off, and charred as if struck by lightning. Obliged to pass near this by the uprooted tree-whose thick trunk, upheld by the branches at the head, lay raised about two feet from the ground — both searchers gave a start, and stood still as if petrified. Inside the great trunk they saw a head, and, on looking more closely, descried Ayrault's body. Grasping it by the arms, they drew it out. The face was pale and the limbs

were stiff. Instantly Cortlandt unfastened the collar, while Bearwarden applied a flask to the lips. But they soon found that their efforts were vain.

"The spirit!" ejaculated Cortlandt. "Dick may be in a trance, in which case he can help us. Let us will hard and long. Accordingly, they threw themselves on their faces, closing their eyes, that nothing might distract their concentration. Minutes, which seemed like ages, passed, and there was no response.

"Now," said Bearwarden, "will together, hard."

Suddenly the stillness was broken by the spirit's voice, which said:

"I felt more than one mind calling, but the effect was so slight I thought first I was mistaken. I will help you in what you want, for the young man is not dead, neither is he injured."

Saying which, he stretched himself upon Ayrault, worked his lungs artificially, and willed with an intensity the observers could feel where they stood. Quickly the colour returned to Ayrault's cheeks, and with the spirit's assistance he sat up and leaned against the tree that had protected him from the storm.

"Your promise was realized," he said, addressing

the spirit. "I have seen what I shall never forget, and lest the anguish — the vision of which I saw — come true, let us return to the earth, and not leave it till I have tasted in reality the joys that in the spirit I seemed to have missed. I have often longed in this life to be in the spirit, but never knew what longing was, till I experienced it as a spirit, to be once more in the flesh."

"You see the mercy of God." said the spirit, "in not ordinarily allowing the spirits of the departed to revisit earth until they are prepared — that is, until they are sufficiently advanced to go there unaided — by which time they have come to understand the wisdom of God's laws. In your case the limiting laws were partially suspended, so that you were able to return at once, with many of the faculties and senses of spirits, but without their accumulated experience. It speaks well for your state of preparation that, without having had those disguised blessings, illness or misfortune, you were not utterly crushed by what you saw when temporarily released. While in the trance you were not in hell, but experienced the feelings that all mortals would if allowed to return immediately. Thus no lover can return to earth till

his fiancee has joined him here, or till, perceiving the benevolence of God's ways, he is not distressed at what he sees, and has the companionship of a host of kindred spirits.

"The spirits you saw in the cemetery were indeed in hell, but had become sufficiently developed to revisit the earth, though doing so did not relieve their distress; for neither the development of their senses, which intensifies their capacity for remorse and regret, nor their investigations into God's boundless mercies, which they have deliberately thrown away, can comfort them.

"Some of your ancestors are on Cassandra, and others are in purgatory here. Though a few faintly felt your prayer, none were able to return and answer beside their graves. It was at your request and prayer that He freed your spirit, but you see how unhappy it made you."

"I see," replied Ayrault, "that no man should wish to anticipate the workings of the Almighty, although I have been unspeakably blessed in that He made an exception — if I may so call it — in my favour, since, in addition to revealing the responsibilities of life, it has shown me the inestimable value

and loyalty of woman's love. I fear, however, that my return to earth greatly distressed the waterer of the flowers you showed me."

"She already sleeps," replied the spirit, "and I have comforted her by a dream in which she sees that you are well."

"When shall we start?" asked Bearwarden.

"As soon as you can get ready," replied Ayrault. "I would not risk running short of enough current to generate the apergy needed to get us back. I dare say when I have been on earth a few years, and have done something for the good of my soul — which, as I take it, can be accomplished as well by advancing science as in any other way — I shall pine for another journey in space as I now do to return."

"How I wish I were engaged," said Bearwarden, glancing at Cortlandt, and overjoyed at Ayrault's recovery.

Accordingly, they resumed their march in the direction in which they had been going when they found Ayrault, and were soon beside the Callisto. Cortlandt worked the combination lock of the lower entrance, through which they crawled. Going to the second story, they opened a large window and

let down a ladder, on which the spirit ascended at their invitation.

Bearwarden and Ayrault immediately set about combining the chemicals that were to produce the force necessary to repel them from Saturn. Bubbles of hydrogen were given off from the lead and zinc plates, and the viscous primary batteries quickly had the wires passing through a vacuum at a white heat.

"I see you are nearly ready to start," said the spirit, "so I must say farewell."

"Will you not come with us?" asked Ayrault.

"No," replied the spirit. "I do not wish to be away as long as it will take you to reach the earth. The Callisto's atmosphere could not absorb my body, so that, should I leave you before your arrival, you would be burdened with a corpse. I may visit you in the spirit, though the desire and effort for communion with spirits, to be of most good, must needs come from the earth. Ere long, my intuition tells me, we shall meet again.

"The vision of your own grave," he continued, addressing Cortlandt, "may not come true for many years, but however long your lives may be, according to earthly reckoning, remember that when they are

past they will seem to have been hardly more than a moment, for they are the personification of frailty and evanescence."

He held up his hands and blessed them; and then repeating, "Farewell and a happy return!" descended as he had come up.

The air was filled with misty shadows, and the pulsating hearts, luminous brains, and centres of spiritual activity quivered with motion. They surrounded the incarnate spirit of the bishop and set up the soft, musical hum the travellers had heard so often since their arrival on Saturn.

"I now understand," thought Ayrault, "why the spirits I met kept repeating that I should be happy. They perceived I was to be translated, and though they doubtless knew what suffering it would cause, they also knew I should be awakened to a sense of great realities, of which I understood but little."

They drew up the ladder and turned on the current, and the Callisto slowly began to rise, while the three friends crowded the window.

"Good-bye!" called the spirit's pleasant voice, to which the men replied in chorus.

The sun had set on the surface of the planet while

they made their preparations; but as the Callisto rose higher, it seemed to rise again, making the sides of their car shine like silver, and, carefully closing the two open windows, they watched the fast-receding world, so many times larger and more magnificent than their own.

3.15. MOTHER EARTH.

"There is something sad," said Cortlandt, "about the end of everything, but I am more sorry to leave Saturn than I have ever been in taking leave of any other place."

When beyond the limits of the atmosphere they applied the full current, and were soon once more cleaving the ether at cometary speed, their motion towards the sun being aided by that great body itself.

They quickly passed beyond the outer edge of the vast silvery rings, and then crossed one after another the orbits of the moons, from the last of which, Iapetus, they obtained their final course in the direction of the earth. They had an acute feeling of homesickness for the mysterious planet on which, while yet mortal, they had found paradise, and had communed with spirits as no modern men ever did.

Without deviating from their almost straight line, they passed within a million miles of Jupiter, which had gained in its smaller orbit on Saturn, and a few days later crossed the track of Mars.

As the earth had completed nearly half a revolution in its orbit since their departure, they here turned somewhat to the right by attracting the ruddy planet, in order to avoid passing too near the sun.

"On some future expedition," said Ayrault, "and when we have a supply of blue glasses, we can take a trip to Venus, if we can find a possible season in her year. Compared with this journey, it would be only like going round the block."

Two days later they had rounded the sun, and laid their course in pursuit of the earth.

That the astronomers in the dark hemisphere were at their posts and saw them, was evident; for a brilliant beam of light again flashed forth, this time from a point a little south of the arctic circle, and after shining one minute, telegraphed this message: "Rejoiced to see you again. Hope all are well."

Since they were not sufficiently near the moon's shadow, they directed their light-beam into their own, which trailed off on one side, and answered: "All

well, thank you. Have wonderful things to relate."

The men at the telescopes then, as before, read the message, and telephoned the light this next question: "When are you coming down, that we may notify the newspapers "

"We wish one more sight of the earth from this height, by daylight. We are now swinging to get between it and the sun."

"We have erected a monument in Van Cortlandt Park, and engraved upon it, `At this place James Bearwarden, Henry Chelmsford Cortlandt, and Richard Rokeby Ayrault left earth, December 21, A. D. 2000, to visit Jupiter.'"

"Add to it, `They returned on the 10th of the following June.'"

Soon the Callisto came nearly between the earth and the sun, when the astronomers could see it only through darkened glasses, and it appeared almost as a crescent. The sight the travellers then beheld was superb. It was about 11 A. M. in London, and Europe was spread before them like a map. All its peninsulas and islands, enclosed blue seas, and bays came out in clear relief. Gradually Russia, Germany,

France, the British Isles, and Spain moved towards the horizon, as in grand procession, and at the same time the Western hemisphere appeared. The hour of day at the longitude above which they hung was about the same as when they set out, but the sun shone far more directly upon the Northern hemisphere than then, and instead of bleak December, this was the leafy month of June.

They were loath to end the lovely scene, and would fain have remained where they were while the earth revolved again; but, remembering that their friends must by this time be waiting, they shut off the repulsion from the earth.

"We need not apply the apergy to the earth until quite near," said Ayrault, "since a great part of the top speed will be taken off by the resistance of the atmosphere, especially as we go in base first. We have only to keep a sufficiently strong repulsion on the dome to prevent our turning over, and to see that our speed is not great enough to heat the car."

When about fifty miles from the surface they felt the expected check, and concluded they had reached the upper limits of the atmosphere. And this increased,

notwithstanding the decrease in their speed, showing how quickly the air became dense.

When about a mile from the earth they had the Callisto well in hand, and allowed it to descend slowly. The ground was already black with people, who, having learned where the Callisto was to touch, had hastened to Van Cortlandt Park.

"I am overjoyed to see you," said Sylvia, when she and Ayrault met. "I had the most dreadful presentiment that something had gone wrong with you. One afternoon and evening I was so perplexed, and during the night had a series of nightmares that I shall never forget. I really believed you were near me, but your nature seemed to have changed, for, instead of its making me happy, I was frightfully distressed. The next day I was very ill, and unable to get up; but during the morning I fell asleep and had another dream, which was intensely realistic and made me believe — yes, convinced me — that you were well. After that dream I soon recovered; but oh, the anguish of the first!"

Ayrault did not tell her then that he had been near her, and of his unspeakable suffering, of which hers had been but the echo.

Three weeks later a clergyman tied the knot that was to unite them forever.

While Sylvia and Ayrault were standing up to receive the congratulations of their friends, Bearwarden, in shaking his hand, said:

"Remember, we have been to neither Uranus, nor Neptune, nor Cassandra, which may be as interesting as anything we have seen. Should you want to take another trip, count me as your humble servant." And Cortlandt, following behind him, said the same thing.

Shortly after this, Sylvia went up-stairs to change her dress, and when she came down she and Ayrault set out on their journey together through life, amid a chorus of cheers and a shower of rice.

Cortlandt then returned to his department at Washington, and Bearwarden resumed his duties with the Terrestrial Axis Straightening Company, in the presidential chair.
FINIS.