ble to, it
might have made a very great difference to me.

There was a beautiful, filmy snow on the ground, which had fallen during
the night. It was scarcely more than a heavy hoar frost, and as the sun
sprang up without any warning twilight, the snow melted and left the
surface damp and fresh. As I afterwards learned, this thin snow fell
almost every night of the year, except for the warmest month of summer
when the grain ripened. There were hardly ever any violent storms or
quick showers. The thin air made heavy clouds or severe atmospheric
movements impossible. But the coolness of night, after a day of feeble
but direct and tropical sunshine, precipitated the moisture in the form
of those delightful feathers of darkness. I also learned that the months
were distinguished by the time of night when this snow fell; for it was
precipitated directly after sunset in the winter, but gradually later
into the night as summer advanced, and finally just before daybreak. The
month in which none fell at all was midsummer, of course. It had
scarcely finished falling this morning when I came out into it.

I sprang to the top of the wall, and was watching the quick rising of
the Sun, and enjoying the sensation of looking fixedly at his orb
without being dazzled, when I noticed that there was a dark notch in the
lower left-hand part of his disc! Soon after I distinguished, somewhat
farther in, a faint and smaller dark spot. This must be the beginning of
the double transit of the Earth and the Moon! I experienced a sensation
of joy in finding the home planet again. I confess it had given me a
curious shock not to be able to see it in the heavens. It was more
comfortable to have it back in the sky again, and at last I knew just
where we were in the calendar. On Earth it was the third day of August,
1892. The summer there was at its height, and all my friends were as
busy and as deeply immersed in their own affairs as if their little spot
had no idea of coquetting with the Sun. Possibly a dozen pairs of
studious eyes out of the teeming hundreds of millions on Earth were
turned Marsward. This led me to wonder what all-absorbing topics of
sport, politics, or war may fill the minds of the possible million
people on Venus, when the Earth is so much excited over one of the
infrequent and picturesque transits of that planet across the Sun.

But the doctor and Zaphnath must know of this! I hastened into the
ante-chamber and called out,--