the
other was nearly gone.

* * * * *

As I took these pellets which Glora now gave us, standing there by the
side of that road, I recall that I was struck with the realization
that never once upon this journey had I conceived myself to be other
than normal stature. I am normally about six feet tall. I still
felt--there in that golden atom--the same height. This landscape
seemed of normal size. There were trees nearby--spreading, fantastic
looking growths with great strings of pods hanging from them. But
still, as I looked up to see one arching over me with its blue-brown
leaves and an air-vine carrying vivid yellow blossoms--whatever the
size of the tree, my consciousness could only conceive myself as of a
normal six-foot stature standing beneath it. The human ego always is
supreme! Around each man's consciousness of himself the entire
universe revolves!

We crouched on the ground when this growth now began; it would not do
to be observed changing size. Polter's giants never did that. Years
before, he had made them large--his few hundred men and women. They
were, Glora said, people both of this realm and from our great world
above--dissolute, criminal characters who now had set themselves up
here as the nucleus of a ruling race.

In a moment now, we were the size of these giants. Twenty to
twenty-five feet tall, in relation to this environment. But I did not
feel so. As I stood up--still myself in normal stature--I saw around
me a shrunken little landscape. The trees, as though in a Japanese
garden, were about my own height; the road was a smooth level path:
the little field near us a toy fence around it. In another road across
it, the man was walking. In height he would barely have reached my
knees. He saw us rise beside the trees. He darted off his road in
alarm, and disappeared.

* * * * *

I have taken longer to tell all this than the actual time which
passed. We could see the boat coming from the island, and it was still
a fair distance off shore. We ran along the road, skirting the edge of
the little town. Its houses were none of them taller than ourselves.
The windows and doorways were ovals into which we could only have
inserted a head or an arm. They were most of them dark. Little people
occasionally stared out, saw us run past, and ducked back, thankful
that we did not stop to harass them.

"This way," said Glora. She ran like a fawn, har