t began to blaze up again, though not with equal ardor, and
after maintaining its glow for a few weeks, and passing through sundry
phases of color, it gradually paled its fires, and returned to its
former insignificance. How many years had elapsed since this awful
conflagration actually took place, it would be presumptuous to guess;
but it must be remembered that news from the heavens, though carried by
the fleetest of messengers, light, reaches us long after the event has
transpired, and that the same celestial carrier is still dropping the
tidings at each station it reaches in space, until it sinks exhausted by
the length of its flight.

As the star had suddenly flamed up, was it not a natural supposition
that it had become inwrapped in burning hydrogen, which in consequence
of some great convulsion had been liberated in prodigious quantities,
and then combining with other elements, had set this hapless world on
fire? In such a fierce conflagration, the combustible gas would soon be
consumed, and the glow would therefore begin to decline, subject, as in
this case, to a second eruption, which occasioned the renewed outburst
of light on the 20th of August.

By such a catastrophe, it is not wholly impossible that our own globe
may some time be ravaged; for if a word from the Almighty were to
unloose for a few moments the bonds of affinity which unite the elements
of water, a single spark would bring them together with a fury that
would kindle the funeral pyre of the human race, and be fatal to the
planet and all the works that are thereon.

"Your argument," he then instantly added, "is by no means a good one.
What do we know of the Supreme Architect of the Universe, or of his
designs? He builds up worlds, and he pulls them down; he kindles suns
and he extinguishes them. He inflames the comet, in one portion of its
orbit, with a heat that no human imagination can conceive of; and in
another, subjects the same blazing orb to a cold intenser than that
which invests forever the antarctic pole. All that we know of Him we
gather through His works. I have shown you that He burns other worlds,
why not this? The habitable parts of our globe are surrounded by water,
and water you know is fire in possibility."

"But all this," I rejoined, "is pure, baseless, profitless speculation."

"Not so fast," he answered. And then rising, he seized the small vial,
and handing it to me, requested me to open it.

I confess I did so with s