than a volume of pathetic writing could do, that he told no human being

of his curious observations. He seems to have been living in such an

atmosphere of petty spite that to admit the existence of a pleasure

would have been to risk the loss of it. He found that as the dawn

advanced, and the amount of diffused light increased, the crystal became

to all appearance non-luminous. And for some time he was unable to see

anything in it, except at night-time, in dark corners of the shop.

But the use of an old velvet cloth, which he used as a background for a

collection of minerals, occurred to him, and by doubling this, and

putting it over his head and hands, he was able to get a sight of the

luminous movement within the crystal even in the daytime. He was very

cautious lest he should be thus discovered by his wife, and he practised

this occupation only in the afternoons, while she was asleep upstairs,

and then circumspectly in a hollow under the counter. And one day,

turning the crystal about in his hands, he saw something. It came and

went like a flash, but it gave him the impression that the object had

for a moment opened to him the view of a wide and spacious and strange

country; and, turning it about, he did, just as the light faded, see

the same vision again.

Now, it would be tedious and unnecessary to state all the phases of Mr.

Cave's discovery from this point. Suffice that the effect was this: the

crystal, being peered into at an angle of about 137 degrees from the

direction of the illuminating ray, gave a clear and consistent picture

of a wide and peculiar countryside. It was not dream-like at all: it

Tales of Space and Time