nge old building. That
it had stood through all the years was, it seemed to me, proof that it
was something different from any other house. I do not think, somehow,
that I had thought of its decaying. Though, why, I could not have said.
It was not until I had meditated upon the matter, for some considerable
time, that I fully realized that the extraordinary space of time through
which it had stood, was sufficient to have utterly pulverized the very
stones of which it was built, had they been taken from any earthly
quarry. Yes, it was undoubtedly mouldering now. All the plaster had gone
from the walls; even as the woodwork of the room had gone, many
ages before.

While I stood, in contemplation, a piece of glass, from one of the
small, diamond-shaped panes, dropped, with a dull tap, amid the dust
upon the sill behind me, and crumbled into a little heap of powder. As I
turned from contemplating it, I saw light between a couple of the stones
that formed the outer wall. Evidently, the mortar was falling away....

After awhile, I turned once more to the window, and peered out. I
discovered, now, that the speed of time had become enormous. The lateral
quiver of the sun-stream, had grown so swift as to cause the dancing
semi-circle of flame to merge into, and disappear in, a sheet of fire
that covered half the Southern sky from East to West.

From the sky, I glanced down to the gardens. They were just a blur of a
palish, dirty green. I had a feeling that they stood higher, than in the
old days; a feeling that they were nearer my window, as though they had
risen, bodily. Yet, they were still a long way below me; for the rock,
over the mouth of the pit, on which this house stands, arches up to a
great height.

It was later, that I noticed a change in the constant color of the
gardens. The pale, dirty green was growing ever paler and paler, toward
white. At last, after a great space, they became greyish-white, and
stayed thus for a very long time. Finally, however, the greyness began
to fade, even as had the green, into a dead white. And this remained,
constant and unchanged. And by this I knew that, at last, snow lay upon
all the Northern world.

And so, by millions of years, time winged onward through eternity, to
the end--the end, of which, in the old-earth days, I had thought
remotely, and in hazily speculative fashion. And now, it was approaching
in a manner of which none had ever dreamed.

I recollect that, about thi