stand him, he looked serious for a minute or two, then
shortened his brilliant yellow toga, as though he had ar-
rived at some resolve, and knelt down directly in front
of me.  He next took my face between his hands, and
putting his nose within an inch of mine, stared into my
eyes with all his might.  At first I was inclined to laugh,
but before long the most curious sensations took hold of me.
They commenced with a thrill which passed all up my body,
and next all feeling save the consciousness of the
loud beating of my heart ceased.  Then it seemed that boy's
eyes were inside my head and not outside, while along
with them an intangible something pervaded my brain.
The sensation at first was like the application of ether to
the skin--a cool, numbing emotion.  It was followed by a
curious tingling feeling, as some dormant cells in my mind
answered to the thought-transfer, and were filled and fertil-
ised!  My other brain-cells most distinctly felt the vitalising
of their companions, and for about a minute I experi-
enced extreme nausea and a headache such as comes
from over-study, though both passed swiftly off.  I presume
that in the future we shall all obtain knowledge in this way.
The Professors of a later day will perhaps keep shops for
the sale of miscellaneous information, and we shall drop in
and be inflated with learning just as the bicyclist gets his tire
pumped up, or the motorist is recharged with electricity at
so much per unit.  Examinations will then become matters of
capacity in the real meaning of that word, and we shall be
tempted to invest our pocket-money by advertisements of
"A cheap line in Astrology," "Try our double-strength, two-
minute course of Classics," "This is remnant day for Trig-
onometry and Metaphysics," and so on.

My friend did not get as far as that.  With him the
process did not take more than a minute, but it was startling
in its results, and reduced me to an extraordinary state of
hypnotic receptibility.  When it was over my instructor
tapped with a finger on my lips, uttering aloud as he did
so the words--

"Know none; know some; know little; know morel" again 
and again; and the strangest part of it is that as he spoke I
did know at first a little, then more, and still more, by swift
accumulation, of his speech and meaning.  In fact, when pre-
sently he suddenly laid a hand over my eyes and then let
go of my head with a pleasantly put question as to how
I felt, I had no difficulty whatever in answering him in his
own tongue, and rose from the ground as one gets from a
hair-dresser's chair, with a vague idea of looking round for
my hat and offering him his fee.

"My word, sir!" I said, in lisping Martian, as I pulled
down my cuffs and put my cravat straight, "that was a
quick process.  I once heard of a man who learnt a language
in the moments he gave each day to having his boots
blacked; but this beats all.  I trust I was a docile pupil?"

"Oh, fairly, sir," answered the soft, musical voice of the
strange being by me; "but your head is thick and your brain
tough.  I could have taught another in half the time."

"Curiously enough," was my response, "those are almost
the very words with which my dear old tutor dismissed
me the morning I left college.  Never mind, the thing is
done.  Shall I pay you anything?"

"I do not understand."

"Any honorarium, then?  Some people understand one
word and not the other."  But the boy only shook his
head in answer.

Strangely enough, I was not greatly surprised all this
time either at the novelty of my whereabouts or at the
hypnotic instruction in a new language just received.  Per-
haps it was because my head still spun too giddily with
that flight in the old rug for much thought; perhaps be-
cause I did not yet fully realise the thing that had happened.
But, anyhow, there is the fact, which, like so many others
in my narrative, must, alas! remain unexplained for the
moment.  The rug, by the way, had completely disap-
peared, my friend comforting me on this score, however,
by saying he had seen it rolled up and taken away by one
whom he knew.

"We are very tidy people here, stranger," he said, "and
everything found Lying about goes back to the Palace store-
rooms.  You will laugh to see the lumber there, for few of us
ever take the trouble to reclaim our property."

Heaven knows I was in no laughing mood when I saw
that enchanted web again!

When I had lain and watched the brightening scene for
a time, I got up, and having stretched and shaken my
clothes into some sort of order, we strolled down the hill
and joined the light-hearted crowds that twined across the
plain and through the streets of their city of booths.  They
were the prettiest, daintiest folk ever eyes looked upon,
well-formed and like to us as could be in the main, but
slender and willowy, so dainty and light, both the men and
the women, so pretty of cheek and hair, so mild of aspect,
I felt, as I strode amongst them, I could have plucked them
like flowers and bound them up in bunches with my belt.
And yet somehow I liked them from the first minute; such a
happy, careless, light-hearted race, again I say, never was
seen before.  There was not a stain of thought or care on a
single one of those white foreheads that eddied round me
under their peaked, blossom-like caps, the perpetual smile
their faces wore never suffered rebuke anywhere; their
very movements were graceful and slow, their laughter
was low and musical, there was an odour of friendly,
slothful happiness about them that made me admire whether
I would or no.

Unfortunately I was not able to live on laughter, as they
appeared to be, so presently turning to my acquaintance,
who had told me his name was the plain monosyllabic An,
and clapping my hand on his shoulder as he stood lost in
sleepy reflection, said, in a good, hearty way, "Hullo, friend
Yellow-jerkin!  If a stranger might set himself athwart the
cheerful current of your meditations, may such a one ask
how far 'tis to the nearest wine-shop or a booth where a
thirsty man may get a mug of ale at a moderate reckoning?"

That gilded youth staggered under my friendly blow as
though the hammer of Thor himself had suddenly lit upon his
shoulder, and ruefully rubbing his tender skin, he turned
on me mild, handsome eyes, answering after a moment, dur-
ing which his native mildness struggled with the pain I
had unwittingly given him--

"If your thirst be as emphatic as your greeting, friend
Heavy-fist, it will certainly be a kindly deed to lead you
to the drinking-place.  My shoulder tingles with your good-
fellowship," he added, keeping two arms'-lengths clear of me.
"Do you wish," he said, "merely to cleanse a dusty throat,
or for blue or pink oblivion?"

"Why," I answered laughingly, "I have come a longish
journey since yesterday night--a journey out of count of
all reasonable mileage--and I might fairly plead a dusty
throat as excuse for a beginning; but as to the other things
mentioned, those tinted forgetfulnesses, I do not even know
what you mean."

"Undoubtedly you are a stranger," said the friendly youth,
eyeing me from top to toe with renewed wonder, "and by
your unknown garb one from afar."

"From how far no man can say--not even I--but from
very far, in truth.  Let that stay your curiosity for the time.
And now to bench and ale-mug, on good fellow!--the short-
est way.  I was never so thirsty as this since our water-butts
went overboard when I sailed the southern seas as a tramp
apprentice, and for three days we had to damp our black
tongues with the puddles the night-dews left in the lift
of our mainsail."

Without more words, being a little awed of me, I thought,
the boy led me through the good-humoured crowd to
where, facing the main road to the town, but a little
sheltered by a thicket of trees covered with gigantic pink
blossoms, stood a drinking-place--a cluster of tables set
round an open grass-plot.  Here he brought me a platter of
some light inefficient cakes which merely served to make
hunger more self-conscious, and some fine aromatic wine
contained in a triple-bodied flask, each division containing
vintage of a separate hue.  We broke our biscuits, sipped
that mysterious wine, and talked of many things until at
last something set us on the subject of astronomy, a study
I found my dapper gallant had some knowledge of--
which was not to be wondered at seeing he dwelt under
skies each night set thick above his curly head with tawny
planets, and glittering constellations sprinkled through space
like flowers in May meadows.  He knew what worlds
went round the sun, larger or lesser, and seeing this I be-
gan to question him, for I was uneasy in my innermost mind
and, you will remember, so far had no certain knowledge
of where I was, only a dim, restless suspicion 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 fel-
low!  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!