a background. The crowd of little figures were milling
around his knees. In the silence of the night the murmur of their voices
floated over to us.

"There he is!" Alan gasped. We all three checked our running; we were at
the edge of the patch of woods. "By God, there he is! Let's get larger
and rush him! He's only a few hundred feet away!"

But Babs? Where was Babs?

"Alan, get down!" I crouched, pulling Alan and Glora with me. "Don't let
him see us! We can't rush him Alan, 'til we find Babs. He'd see us
coming and kill her."

Of all the strange events that had been flung at us, I think this sudden
crisis now most confused Alan and me.... To get larger, or smaller?
Which? Yet something had to be done at once.

Glora said, "We can get through the woods best in this size. We won't be
seen and will be closer to the landing."

We crouched so that the treetops were always well over us. The patch of
woods was dark. A soil of black loam was under us, a thick soft
underbrush reached our knees, and lacy, flexible leaves and branches
were about shoulder height. We pushed them aside, forcing our way softly
forward. It was not far. The little murmuring voices of the crowd grew
louder.

Presently we were crouching at the other edge of the woods. I softly
shoved the tree branches aside until we could all three get a clear view
of the strange scene now directly before us.

And I saw a toy dock, at which a twenty-foot, bargelike open sailboat
was landing; a narrow starlit roadway, crowded with a milling throng of
people all no more than a foot and a half in height. The crowd milled
almost to where we were crouching, unseen in the shrubbery.

Across the road by the dock, Polter stood with the crowd down around his
knees. In height he seemed the old familiar Polter. Bareheaded, with his
shaggy black hair shot with white. He was dressed in Earth fashion:
narrow black evening trousers and a white shirt and collar with flowing
black tie. I saw at once what Alan had noticed--the change in him. An
abnormality of age. I would have called him now forty, or older. Beyond
even that there was an abnormality. A man old before his time; or
younger than he should have been for the years he had lived. An
indescribable mingling of something of the two worlds, perhaps. It
marked him with a look at once unnatural and sinister.

These were instant impressions. Glora was plucking at me. "On the white
chest of his shirt, something is there."