anced upon
colors, colors, and more colors than we thought possible, we who had
seen no houses save the white ones, the brown ones and the grey. There
were great pieces of glass on the walls, but it was not glass, for when
we looked upon it we saw our own bodies and all the things behind us, as
on the face of a lake. There were strange things which we had never
seen and the use of which we do not know. And there were globes of glass
everywhere, in each room, the globes with the metal cobwebs inside, such
as we had seen in our tunnel.

We found the sleeping hall and we stood in awe upon its threshold. For
it was a small room and there were only two beds in it. We found no
other beds in the house, and then we knew that only two had lived here,
and this passes understanding. What kind of world did they have, the men
of the Unmentionable Times?

We found garments, and the Golden One gasped at the sight of them. For
they were not white tunics, nor white togas; they were of all colors, no
two of them alike. Some crumbled to dust as we touched them, but others
were of heavier cloth, and they felt soft and new in our fingers.

We found a room with walls made of shelves, which held rows of
manuscripts, from the floor to the ceiling. Never had we seen such
a number of them, nor of such strange shape. They were not soft and
rolled, they had hard shells of cloth and leather; and the letters on
their pages were small and so even that we wondered at the men who had
such handwriting. We glanced through the pages, and we saw that they
were written in our language, but we found many words which we could not
understand. Tomorrow, we shall begin to read these scripts.

When we had seen all the rooms of the house, we looked at the Golden One
and we both knew the thought in our minds.

"We shall never leave this house," we said, "nor let it be taken from
us. This is our home and the end of our journey. This is your house,
Golden One, and ours, and it belongs to no other men whatever as far as
the earth may stretch. We shall not share it with others, as we share
not our joy with them, nor our love, nor our hunger. So be it to the end
of our days."

"Your will be done," they said.

Then we went out to gather wood for the great hearth of our home. We
brought water from the stream which runs among the trees under our
windows. We killed a mountain goat, and we brought its flesh to be
cooked in a strange copper pot we found in a place of