tombs and mausoleums and monuments, saving only that they were all uniformly black instead of being white, as most sepulchres are.  And then he saw, crowding out of the largest building, very much as people disperse from church, a number of pallid, rounded, pale-green figures.  These dispersed in several directions about the broad street of the place, some going through side alleys and reappearing upon the steepness of the hill, others entering some of the small black buildings which lined the way.

At the sight of these things drifting up towards him, Plattner stopped, staring.  They were not walking, they were indeed limbless, and they had the appearance of human heads, beneath which a tadpole-like body swung.  He was too astonished at their strangeness, too full, indeed, of strangeness, to be seriously alarmed by them.  They drove towards him, in front of the chill wind that was blowing uphill, much as soap-bubbles drive before a draught.  And as he looked at the nearest of those approaching, he saw it was indeed a human head, albeit with singularly large eyes, and wearing such an expression of distress and anguish as he had never seen before upon mortal countenance.  He was surprised to find that it did not turn to regard him, but seemed to be watching and following some unseen moving thing.  For a moment he was puzzled, and then it occurred to him that this creature was watching with its enormous eyes something that was happening in the world he had just left.  Nearer it came, and nearer, and he was too astonished to cry out.  It made a very faint fretting sound as it came close to him.  Then it struck his face with a gentle pat—­its touch was very cold—­and drove past him, and upward towards the crest of the hill.

An extraordinary conviction flashed across Plattner’s mind that this head had a strong likeness to Lidgett.  Then he turned his attention to the other heads that were now swarming thickly up the hill-side.  None made the slightest sign of recognition.  One or two, indeed, came close to his head and almost followed the example of the first, but he dodged convulsively out of the way.  Upon most of them he saw the same expression of unavailing regret he had seen upon the first, and heard the same faint sounds of wretchedness from them.  One or two wept, and one rolling swiftly uphill wore an expression of diabolical rage.  But others were cold, and several had a look of gratified interest in their eyes.  One, at least, was almost in an ecstasy of happiness.  Plattner does not remember that he recognised any more likenesses in those he saw at this time.

For several hours, perhaps, Plattner watched these strange things dispersing themselves over the hills, and not till long after they had ceased to issue from the clustering black buildings in the gorge, did he resume his downward climb.  The darkness about him increased so much that he had a difficulty in stepping true.  Overhead the sky was now a bright, pale green.  He felt neither hunger nor thirst.  Later, when he did, he found a chilly stream running down the centre of the gorge, and the rare moss upon the boulders, when he tried it at last in desperation, was good to eat.