ularly clear, fast traveling
shape of fire, trailing streaks of cold flame. The stars showed now,
merely as fine hairs of fire against the dark.

Once, I turned from the window, and glanced at Pepper. In the flash of
a day, I saw that he slept, quietly, and I moved once more to
my watching.

The sun was now bursting up from the Eastern horizon, like a stupendous
rocket, seeming to occupy no more than a second or two in hurling from
East to West. I could no longer perceive the passage of clouds across
the sky, which seemed to have darkened somewhat. The brief nights,
appeared to have lost the proper darkness of night; so that the hair-like
fire of the flying stars, showed but dimly. As the speed increased, the
sun began to sway very slowly in the sky, from South to North, and then,
slowly again, from North to South.

So, amid a strange confusion of mind, the hours passed.

All this while had Pepper slept. Presently, feeling lonely and
distraught, I called to him, softly; but he took no notice. Again, I
called, raising my voice slightly; still he moved not. I walked over to
where he lay, and touched him with my foot, to rouse him. At the action,
gentle though it was, he fell to pieces. That is what happened; he
literally and actually crumbled into a mouldering heap of bones
and dust.

For the space of, perhaps a minute, I stared down at the shapeless
heap, that had once been Pepper. I stood, feeling stunned. What can have
happened? I asked myself; not at once grasping the grim significance of
that little hill of ash. Then, as I stirred the heap with my foot, it
occurred to me that this could only happen in a great space of time.
Years--and years.

Outside, the weaving, fluttering light held the world. Inside, I stood,
trying to understand what it meant--what that little pile of dust and
dry bones, on the carpet, meant. But I could not think, coherently.

I glanced away, 'round the room, and now, for the first time, noticed
how dusty and old the place looked. Dust and dirt everywhere; piled in
little heaps in the corners, and spread about upon the furniture. The
very carpet, itself, was invisible beneath a coating of the same, all
pervading, material. As I walked, little clouds of the stuff rose up
from under my footsteps, and assailed my nostrils, with a dry, bitter
odor that made me wheeze, huskily.

Suddenly, as my glance fell again upon Pepper's remains, I stood still,
and gave voice to my confusion--question