Reply Paid by H. F. Heard

glasslike it appeared to be. Above the knifelike edge of the summit-ridge the sky went up in bands of orange, lemon, green, to blue and purple-violet that was almost indigo. Right down into the green belt the embroidery of first-magnitude constellations was already visible, a stitching of gold. Somehow eating one’s fill—and I was ready for it—and that utterly serene emptiness didn’t seem to go together.
    â€œThe coffee’s ready,” I heard Mr. Mycroft say, however, and once I had started drinking and eating my queer scruple left me.
    Yet when we had cleared up—Kerson had already rolled himself up; Mr. Mycroft was also laid out, only making some notes by an electric torch—I took one more look at our super-surroundings. The sky was now all indigo, but so dense with stars that it seemed hard to believe that there could be much space in that cosmic blizzard of suns. Overhead in a complete arch they had become a belt of luminous mist—one was looking up into the Galaxy, the disk and wheel of our own island universe. There seemed no air. The stars stood right on the edge of the mountain range one fronted, as clearly as they stood right up above one’s head. Every moment, like distant lighthouses, they blinked down behind this sharp western wall, while another watcher flashed up from behind the eastern range. Suddenly starting out of the dark a meteor made a perfect curve of light, left a faint glow for as long, and vanished.
    â€œThat’s one of our clues,” said Mr. Mycroft’s low voice at my shoulder. “Don’t think, Mr. Silchester, because we are after a man and two asses in this immense wilderness—‘All geology by day, all astronomy by night,’ as Mr. Priestley put it succinctly—that we have got things completely out of proportion. Literally, we too follow a star, so real that I’d rather follow it than hitch my wagon to it. Further, and, indeed, more to the point, what we are searching for and what we are attempting to prevent going wrong if we can prevent it, is something which links us with the nature of things. Go to bed, Mr. Silchester, and sleep well. The ‘eternal silences’ need not ‘affright’ us, for, if we choose, we can speak what they would say.”
    What all that rhetoric meant I was at a loss to say. But I felt that the old man felt he had a goal worth getting at and saw his way to get there. And certainly I began to feel rapidly that nothing now could be better than sleep. I slipped into my sack and was gone before I could turn over.
    The other two had already begun to get breakfast ready before I woke—woke with an appetite that saw no reason for not eating everything it was offered, however fine the view. Mr. Mycroft and Kerson had evidently already made their plans. They had assembled the baggage we were to take with us. So, when I had eaten heartily, I sat outside admiring the view which was, in the early morning light and cool, not so fine as the evening before but perhaps even more attractive. I began to feel that the desert and myself might get along. There was a light air moving; the sun was low enough to cast plenty of shadows which brought into relief all the scarps and colored rocks. The place was more a fantastic garden, hereabouts, than a desert. In the crannies of the colored and carved stones grew, I now noticed, queer little plants which almost seemed stone, carved into stout leaves and stalks. I thought, “It only needs an animal or two to make a perfect composition of its sort,” and at that moment out scampered a lithe gray creature rather like an elongated squirrel. With a quick scurry it was over a boulder and onto the ground again. I waited still, watching its easy movements. It was making for a small piece of crust I had thrown down a couple of yards away. It darted out and caught hold of the bread, then looked round, giving the food a relishing bite or two—and was