old wind) that he was near the crest of a hill, and that a
steep valley fell away beneath his feet. The green glow along the edge of
the sky seemed to be growing in extent and intensity. He stood up, rubbing
his eyes.

It would seem that he made a few steps, going steeply downhill, and then
stumbled, nearly fell, and sat down again upon a jagged mass of rock to
watch the dawn. He became aware that the world about him was absolutely
silent. It was as still as it was dark, and though there was a cold wind
blowing up the hill-face, the rustle of grass, the soughing of the boughs
that should have accompanied it, were absent. He could hear, therefore, if
he could not see, that the hillside upon which he stood was rocky and
desolate. The green grew brighter every moment, and as it did so a faint,
transparent blood-red mingled with, but did not mitigate, the blackness of
the sky overhead and the rocky desolations about him. Having regard to
what follows, I am inclined to think that that redness may have been an
optical effect due to contrast. Something black fluttered momentarily
against the livid yellow-green of the lower sky, and then the thin and
penetrating voice of a bell rose out of the black gulf below him. An
oppressive expectation grew with the growing light.

It is probable that an hour or more elapsed while he sat there, the
strange green light growing brighter every moment, and spreading slowly,
in flamboyant fingers, upward towards the zenith. As it grew, the spectral
vision of _our_ world became relatively or absolutely fainter.
Probably both, for the time must have been about that of our earthly
sunset. So far as his vision of our world went, Plattner, by his few steps
downhill, had passed through the floor of the class-room, and was now, it
seemed, sitting in mid-air in the larger schoolroom downstairs. He saw the
boarders distinctly, but much more faintly than he had seen Lidgett. They
were preparing their evening tasks, and he noticed with interest that
several were cheating with their Euclid riders by means of a crib, a
compilation whose existence he had hitherto never suspected. As the time
passed, they faded steadily, as steadily as the light of the green dawn
increased.

Looking down into the valley, he saw that the light had crept far down its
rocky sides, and that the profound blackness of the abyss was now broken
by a minute green glow, like the light of a glow-worm. And almost
immediately the limb o