Looking down into the valley, he saw that the light had crept far down its rocky sides, and that the profound blackness of the abyss was now broken by a minute green glow, like the light of a glow-worm.  And almost immediately the limb of a huge heavenly body of blazing green rose over the basaltic undulations of the distant hills, and the monstrous hill-masses about him came out gaunt and desolate, in green light and deep, ruddy black shadows.  He became aware of a vast number of ball-shaped objects drifting as thistledown drifts over the high ground.  There were none of these nearer to him than the opposite side of the gorge.  The bell below twanged quicker and quicker, with something like impatient insistence, and several lights moved hither and thither.  The boys at work at their desks were now almost imperceptibly faint.

This extinction of our world, when the green sun of this other universe rose, is a curious point upon which Plattner insists.  During the Other-World night it is difficult to move about, on account of the vividness with which the things of this world are visible.  It becomes a riddle to explain why, if this is the case, we in this world catch no glimpse of the Other-World.  It is due, perhaps, to the comparatively vivid illumination of this world of ours.  Plattner describes the midday of the Other-World, at its brightest, as not being nearly so bright as this world at full moon, while its night is profoundly black.  Consequently, the amount of light, even in an ordinary dark room, is sufficient to render the things of the Other-World invisible, on the same principle that faint phosphorescence is only visible in the profoundest darkness.  I have tried, since he told me his story, to see something of the Other-World by sitting for a long space in a photographer’s dark room at night.  I have certainly seen indistinctly the form of greenish slopes and rocks, but only, I must admit, very indistinctly indeed.  The reader may possibly be more successful.  Plattner tells me that since his return he has dreamt and seen and recognised places in the Other-World, but this is probably due to his memory of these scenes.  It seems quite possible that people with unusually keen eyesight may occasionally catch a glimpse of this strange Other-World about us.

However, this is a digression.  As the green sun rose, a long street of black buildings became perceptible, though only darkly and indistinctly, in the gorge, and after some hesitation, Plattner began to clamber down the precipitous descent towards them.  The descent was long and exceedingly tedious, being so not only by the extraordinary steepness, but also by reason of the looseness of the boulders with which the whole face of the hill was strewn.  The noise of his descent—­now and then his heels struck fire from the rocks—­seemed now the only sound in the universe, for the beating of the bell had ceased.  As he drew nearer, he perceived that the various edifices had a singular resemblance to