t that she lived at a considerable distance, and that
her name was Lylda. Finally she pulled me by the hand and led me away
with a proprietary air that amused and, I must admit, pleased me
tremendously.

"We had progressed through the woods in this way, hardly more than a few
hundred yards, when suddenly I found that she was taking me into the
mouth of a cave or passageway, sloping downward at an angle of perhaps
twenty degrees. I noticed now, more graphically than ever before, a
truth that had been gradually forcing itself upon me. Darkness was
impossible in this new world. We were now shut in between narrow walls
of crystalline rock, with a roof hardly more than fifty feet above.

"No artificial light of any kind was in evidence, yet the scene was
lighted quite brightly. This, I have explained, was caused by the
phosphorescent radiation that apparently emanated from every particle of
mineral matter in this universe.

"As we advanced, many other tunnels crossed the one we were traveling.
And now, occasionally, we passed other people, the men dressed similarly
to Lylda, but wearing their hair chopped off just above the shoulder
line.

"Later, I found that the men were generally about five and a half feet
in stature: lean, muscular, and with a grayer, harder look to their skin
than the iridescent quality that characterized the women.

"They were fine-looking chaps these we encountered. All of them stared
curiously at me, and several times we were held up by chattering groups.
The intense whiteness of my skin, for it looked in this light the color
of chalk, seemed to both awe and amuse them. But they treated me with
great deference and respect, which I afterwards learned was because of
Lylda herself, and also what she told them about me.

"At several of the intersections of the tunnels there were wide open
spaces. One of these we now approached. It was a vast amphitheater, so
broad its opposite wall was invisible, and it seemed crowded with
people. At the side, on a rocky niche in the wall, a speaker harangued
the crowd.

"We skirted the edge of this crowd and plunged into another passageway,
sloping downward still more steeply. I was so much interested in the
strange scenes opening before me that I remarked little of the distance
we traveled. Nor did I question Lylda but seldom. I was absorbed in the
complete similarity between this and my own world in its general
characteristics, and yet its complete strangeness