as man can know and
who spend our lives in seeking knowledge.'

"I felt my confidence returning. These were men such as I had dreamed
might some day be. 'But what can you do with time?' I asked. 'Is not
time a thing unalterable, unchanging?'

"Both shook their heads. 'No, Henri, it is not. But lately have our men
of science found that out.'

"They went on to tell me of things that I could not understand. It
seemed they were telling that their men of knowledge had found time to
be a mere measurement, or dimension, just as length or breadth or
thickness. They mentioned names with reverence that I had never
heard--Einstein and De Sitter and Lorentz. I was in a maze at their
words.

"They said that just as men use force to move or rotate matter from one
point along the three known measurements to another, so might matter be
rotated from one point in time, the fourth measurement, to another, if
the right force were used. They said that their machines produced that
force and applied it to the metal circle from five hundred years before
to this time of theirs.

"They had tried it many times, they said, but nothing had been on the
spot at that time and they had rotated nothing but the air above it from
the one time to the other, and the reverse. I told them of the
thunderclaps that had been heard at the spot in the field and that had
made me curious. They said that they had been caused by the changing of
the air above the spot from the one time to the other in their trials. I
could not understand these things.

"They said then that I had happened to be on the spot when they had
again turned on their force and so had been rotated out of my own time
into theirs. They said that they had always hoped to get someone living
from a distant time in that way, since such a man would be a proof to
all the other men of knowledge of what they had been able to do.

"I could not comprehend, and they saw and told me not to fear. I was not
fearful, but excited at the things that I saw around me. I asked of
those things and Rastin and Thicourt laughed and explained some of them
to me as best they could. Much they said that I did not understand but
my eyes saw marvels in that room of which I had never dreamed.

"They showed me a thing like a small glass bottle with wires inside, and
then told me to touch a button beneath it. I did so and the bottle shone
with a brilliant light exceeding that of scores of candles. I shrank
back, but they