he had not lost
sight of the need there was to get back out of this time of Atlantis
into his own time. He knew that he must have got into these Atlantean
times by some very simple accidental magic, and he felt no doubt that he
should get back in the same way. He felt almost sure that the
reverse-action, so to speak, of the magic would begin when the stone got
back to the place where it had lain for so many thousand years before he
happened to go to sleep on it, and to start--perhaps by the St. John's
wort--the accidental magic. If only, when he got back there he could
think of the compelling, the magic word!

And now the slow procession wound over the downs, and far away across
the plain, which was almost just the same then as it is now, Quentin saw
what he knew must be Stonehenge. But it was no longer the grey pile of
ruins that you have perhaps seen--or have, at any rate, seen pictures
of.

From afar one could see the gleam of yellow gold and red copper; the
flutter of purple curtains, the glitter and dazzle of shimmering silver.

As they drew near to the spot Quentin perceived that the great stones he
remembered were overlaid with ornamental work, with vivid,
bright-coloured paintings. The whole thing was a great circular
building, every stone in its place. At a mile or two distant lay a town.
And in that town, with every possible luxury, served with every
circumstance of servile homage, Quentin ate and slept.

I wish I had time to tell you what that town was like where he slept and
ate, but I have not. You can read for yourself, some day, what Atlantis
was like. Plato tells us a good deal, and the Colonies of Atlantis must
have had at least a reasonable second-rate copy of the cities of that
fair and lovely land.

That night, for the first time since he had first gone to sleep on the
altar stone, Quentin slept apart from it. He lay on a wooden couch
strewn with soft bear-skins, and a woollen coverlet was laid over him.
And he slept soundly.

In the middle of the night, as it seemed, Blue Mantle woke him.

'Come,' he said, 'Chosen of the Gods--since you _will_ be that, and no
stowaway--the hour draws nigh.'

The mammoth was waiting. Quentin and Blue Mantle rode on its back to the
outer porch of the new temple of Stonehenge. Rows of priests and
attendants, robed in white and blue and purple, formed a sort of avenue
up which Blue Mantle led the Chosen of the Gods, who was Quentin. They
took off his jacket a