looked half transparent as
the sunlight and shade swam over their backs in large trembling
irregular patches.

In the oval flower bed the snail, whose shell had been stained red,
blue, and yellow for the space of two minutes or so, now appeared to be
moving very slightly in its shell, and next began to labour over the
crumbs of loose earth which broke away and rolled down as it passed over
them. It appeared to have a definite goal in front of it, differing in
this respect from the singular high stepping angular green insect who
attempted to cross in front of it, and waited for a second with its
antennae trembling as if in deliberation, and then stepped off as rapidly
and strangely in the opposite direction. Brown cliffs with deep green
lakes in the hollows, flat, blade-like trees that waved from root to
tip, round boulders of grey stone, vast crumpled surfaces of a thin
crackling texture--all these objects lay across the snail's progress
between one stalk and another to his goal. Before he had decided whether
to circumvent the arched tent of a dead leaf or to breast it there came
past the bed the feet of other human beings.

This time they were both men. The younger of the two wore an expression
of perhaps unnatural calm; he raised his eyes and fixed them very
steadily in front of him while his companion spoke, and directly his
companion had done speaking he looked on the ground again and sometimes
opened his lips only after a long pause and sometimes did not open them
at all. The elder man had a curiously uneven and shaky method of
walking, jerking his hand forward and throwing up his head abruptly,
rather in the manner of an impatient carriage horse tired of waiting
outside a house; but in the man these gestures were irresolute and
pointless. He talked almost incessantly; he smiled to himself and again
began to talk, as if the smile had been an answer. He was talking about
spirits--the spirits of the dead, who, according to him, were even now
telling him all sorts of odd things about their experiences in Heaven.

"Heaven was known to the ancients as Thessaly, William, and now, with
this war, the spirit matter is rolling between the hills like thunder."
He paused, seemed to listen, smiled, jerked his head and continued:--

"You have a small electric battery and a piece of rubber to insulate the
wire--isolate?--insulate?--well, we'll skip the details, no good going
into details that wouldn't be understood--and in sho