ty of cases it is true.

"So I believe that as I diminished in stature, my time-progress became
faster and faster. I am seven days older than when I left you day before
yesterday. I have lived those seven days, gentlemen, there is no getting
around that fact."

"This is all tremendously interesting," sighed the Big Business Man;
"but not very comprehensible."

CHAPTER VI

STRATEGY AND KISSES

"It was the morning of my third day in the castle," began the Chemist
again, "that I was taken by Lylda before the king. We found him seated
alone in a little anteroom, overlooking a large courtyard, which we
could see was crowded with an expectant, waiting throng. I must explain
to you now, that I was considered by Lylda somewhat in the light of a
Messiah, come to save her nation from the destruction that threatened
it.

"She believed me a supernatural being, which, indeed, if you come to
think of it, gentlemen, is exactly what I was. I tried to tell her
something of myself and the world I had come from, but the difficulties
of language and her smiling insistence and faith in her own conception
of me, soon caused me to desist. Thereafter I let her have her own way,
and did not attempt any explanation again for some time.

"For several weeks before Lylda found me sleeping by the river's edge,
she had made almost a daily pilgrimage to that vicinity. A maidenly
premonition, a feeling that had first come to her several years before,
told her of my coming, and her father's knowledge and scientific beliefs
had led her to the outer surface of the world as the direction in which
to look. A curious circumstance, gentlemen, lies in the fact that Lylda
clearly remembered the occasion when this first premonition came to her.
And in the telling, she described graphically the scene in the cave,
where I saw her through the microscope." The Chemist paused an instant
and then resumed.

"When we entered the presence of the king, he greeted me quietly, and
made me sit by his side, while Lylda knelt on the floor at our feet. The
king impressed me as a man about fifty years of age. He was
smooth-shaven, with black, wavy hair, reaching his shoulders. He was
dressed in the usual tunic, the upper part of his body covered by a
quite similar garment, ornamented with a variety of metal objects. His
feet were protected with a sort of buskin; at his side hung a
crude-looking metal spear.

"The conversation that followed my entrance, lasted