that I had come beyond the ken of all men's
knowledge.

Therefore, sweeping clear the board with my sleeve, and breaking the
wafer cake I was eating, I set down one central piece for the sun, and,
"See here!" I said, "good fellow! This morsel shall stand for that sun
you have just been welcoming back with quaint ritual. Now stretch your
starry knowledge to the utmost, and put down that tankard for a moment.
If this be yonder sun and this lesser crumb be the outermost one of our
revolving system, and this the next within, and this the next, and so
on; now if this be so tell me which of these fragmentary orbs is
ours--which of all these crumbs from the hand of the primordial would
be that we stand upon?" And I waited with an anxiety a light manner
thinly hid, to hear his answer.

It came at once. Laughing as though the question were too trivial, and
more to humour my wayward fancy than aught else, that boy circled his
rosy thumb about a minute and brought it down on the planet Mars!

I started and stared at him; then all of a tremble cried, "You trifle
with me! Choose again--there, see, I will set the symbols and name
them to you anew. There now, on your soul tell me truly which this
planet is, the one here at our feet?" And again the boy shook his
head, wondering at my eagerness, and pointed to Mars, saying gently as
he did so the fact was certain as the day above us, nothing was
marvellous but my questioning.

Mars! oh, dreadful, tremendous, unexpected! With a cry of affright,
and bringing my fist down on the table till all the cups upon it leapt,
I told him he lied--lied like a simpleton whose astronomy was as rotten
as his wit--smote the table and scowled at him for a spell, then turned
away and let my chin fall upon my breast and my hands upon my lap.

And yet, and yet, it might be so! Everything about me was new and
strange, the crisp, thin air I breathed was new; the lukewarm sunshine
new; the sleek, long, ivory faces of the people new! Yesterday--was it
yesterday?--I was back there--away in a world that pines to know of
other worlds, and one fantastic wish of mine, backed by a hideous,
infernal chance, had swung back the doors of space and shot me--if that
boy spoke true--into the outer void where never living man had been
before: all my wits about me, all the horrible bathos of my earthly
clothing on me, all my terrestrial hungers in my veins!

I sprang to my feet and swept my hands across my eye