monster burned the Torches; maybe
half-a-mile upon each side; yet sufficient light they threw to show the
lumbered-forward head of the never-sleeping Brute.

To the East, as I stood there in the quietness of the Sleeping-Time on
the One Thousandth Plateau, I heard a far, dreadful sound, down in the
lightless East; and, presently, again--a strange, dreadful laughter,
deep as a low thunder among the mountains. And because this sound came
odd whiles from the Unknown Lands beyond the Valley of The Hounds, we
had named that far and never-seen Place "The Country Whence Comes The
Great Laughter." And though I had heard the sound, many and oft a time,
yet did I never hear it without a most strange thrilling of my heart,
and a sense of my littleness, and of the utter terror which had beset
the last millions of the world.

Yet, because I had heard the Laughter oft, I paid not over-long
attention to my thoughts upon it; and when, in a little it died away
into that Eastern Darkness, I turned my spy-glass upon the Giants' Pit,
which lay to the South of the Giants' Kilns. And these same Kilns were
tended by the giants, and the light of the Kilns was red and fitful, and
threw wavering shadows and lights across the mouth of the pit; so that I
saw giants crawling up out of the pit; but not properly seen, by reason
of the dance of the shadows. And so, because ever there was so much to
behold, I looked away, presently, to that which was plainer to be
examined.

To the back of the Giants' Pit was a great, black Headland, that stood
vast, between the Valley of The Hounds (where lived the monstrous Night
Hounds) and the Giants. And the light of the Kilns struck the brow of
this black Headland; so that, constantly, I saw things peer over the
edge, coming forward a little into the light of the Kilns, and drawing
back swiftly into the shadows. And thus it had been ever, through the
uncounted ages; so that the Headland was known as The Headland From
Which Strange Things Peer; and thus was it marked in our maps and charts
of that grim world.

And so I could go on ever; but that I fear to weary; and yet, whether I
do weary, or not, I must tell of this country that I see, even now as I
set my thoughts down, so plainly that my memory wanders in a hushed and
secret fashion along its starkness, and amid its strange and dread
habitants, so that it is but by an effort I realise me that my body is
not there in this very moment that I write. And so to