He groped about among the tombs that ran down the gorge, seeking vaguely for some clue to these inexplicable things.  After a long time he came to the entrance of the big mausoleum-like building from which the heads had issued.  In this he found a group of green lights burning upon a kind of basaltic altar, and a bell-rope from a belfry overhead hanging down into the centre of the place.  Round the wall ran a lettering of fire in a character unknown to him.  While he was still wondering at the purport of these things, he heard the receding tramp of heavy feet echoing far down the street.  He ran out into the darkness again, but he could see nothing.  He had a mind to pull the bell-rope, and finally decided to follow the footsteps.  But, although he ran far, he never overtook them; and his shouting was of no avail.  The gorge seemed to extend an interminable distance.  It was as dark as earthly starlight throughout its length, while the ghastly green day lay along the upper edge of its precipices.  There were none of the heads, now, below.  They were all, it seemed, busily occupied along the upper slopes.  Looking up, he saw them drifting hither and thither, some hovering stationary, some flying swiftly through the air.  It reminded him, he said, of “big snowflakes”; only these were black and pale green.

In pursuing the firm, undeviating footsteps that he never overtook, in groping into new regions of this endless devil’s dyke, in clambering up and down the pitiless heights, in wandering about the summits, and in watching the drifting faces, Plattner states that he spent the better part of seven or eight days.  He did not keep count, he says.  Though once or twice he found eyes watching him, he had word with no living soul.  He slept among the rocks on the hillside.  In the gorge things earthly were invisible, because, from the earthly standpoint, it was far underground.  On the altitudes, so soon as the earthly day began, the world became visible to him.  He found himself sometimes stumbling over the dark green rocks, or arresting himself on a precipitous brink, while all about him the green branches of the Sussexville lanes were swaying; or, again, he seemed to be walking through the Sussexville streets, or watching unseen the private business of some household.  And then it was he discovered, that to almost every human being in our world there pertained some of these drifting heads; that everyone in the world is watched intermittently by these helpless disembodiments.

What are they—­these Watchers of the Living?  Plattner never learned.  But two, that presently found and followed him, were like his childhood’s memory of his father and mother.  Now and then other faces turned their eyes upon him:  eyes like those of dead people who had swayed him, or injured him, or helped him in his youth and manhood.  Whenever they looked at him, Plattner was overcome with a strange sense of responsibility.  To his mother he ventured to speak; but she made no answer.  She looked sadly, steadfastly, and tenderly—­a little reproachfully, too, it seemed—­into his eyes.