spread over the countryside that my jewel-hunter was
bringing a live "spook" along with him, considerable curiosity mixed
with an awe all to my advantage characterising the people we met
thereafter. Yet the wonder was not so great as might have been
expected, for these people were accustomed to meeting the tags of lost
races, and though they stared hard, their interest was chiefly in
hearing how, when, and where I had been found, whether I bit or kicked,
or had any other vices, and if I possessed any commercial value.

My guide's throat must have ached with the repetition of the narrative,
but as he made the story redound greatly to his own glory, he put up
cheerfully with the hoarseness. In this way, walking and talking
alternately, we travelled during daylight through a country which
slowly lost its rugged features and became more and more inhabited, the
hardy people living in scattered villages in contradiction to the
debased city-loving Hither folk.

About nightfall we came to a sea-fishers' hamlet, where, after the old
man had explained my exalted nature and venerable antiquity, I was
offered shelter for the night.

My host was the headman, and I must say his bearing towards the
supernatural was most unaffected. If it had been an Avenue hotel I
could not have found more handsome treatment than in that reed-thatched
hut. They made me wash and rest, and then were all agog for my history;
but that I postponed, contenting myself with telling them I had been
lately in Seth, and had come thence to see them via the ice valley--to
all of which they listened with the simplicity of children. Afterwards
I turned on them, and openly marvelled that so small a geographical
distance as there was between that land and this could make so vast a
human difference. "The truth, O dweller in blue shadows of primordial
ice, is," said the most intelligent of the Thither folk as we sat over
fried deer-steak in his hut that evening, "we who are MEN, not
Peri-zad, not overstayed fairies like those you have been amongst, are
newcomers here on this shore. We came but a few generations ago from
where the gold curtains of the sun lie behind the westward pine-trees,
and as we came we drove, year by year, those fays, those spent
triflers, back before us. All this land was theirs once, and more and
more towards our old home. You may still see traces of harbours dug
and cities built thousands of years ago, when the Hither folk were
living m