The last three passages of the sun had shown me a snow-covered earth, which, at night, had seemed, for a few seconds, incredibly weird under the fast-shifting light of the soaring and falling moon.  Now, however, for a little space, the sky was hidden, by a sea of swaying, leaden-white clouds, which lightened and blackened, alternately, with the passage of day and night.

The clouds rippled and vanished, and there was once more before me, the vision of the swiftly leaping sun, and nights that came and went like shadows.

Faster and faster, spun the world.  And now each day and night was completed within the space of but a few seconds; and still the speed increased.

It was a little later, that I noticed that the sun had begun to have the suspicion of a trail of fire behind it.  This was due, evidently, to the speed at which it, apparently, traversed the heavens.  And, as the days sped, each one quicker than the last, the sun began to assume the appearance of a vast, flaming comet[4] flaring across the sky at short, periodic intervals.  At night, the moon presented, with much greater truth, a comet-like aspect; a pale, and singularly clear, fast traveling shape of fire, trailing streaks of cold flame.  The stars showed now, merely as fine hairs of fire against the dark.

Once, I turned from the window, and glanced at Pepper.  In the flash of a day, I saw that he slept, quietly, and I moved once more to my watching.

The sun was now bursting up from the Eastern horizon, like a stupendous rocket, seeming to occupy no more than a second or two in hurling from East to West.  I could no longer perceive the passage of clouds across the sky, which seemed to have darkened somewhat.  The brief nights, appeared to have lost the proper darkness of night; so that the hair-like fire of the flying stars, showed but dimly.  As the speed increased, the sun began to sway very slowly in the sky, from South to North, and then, slowly again, from North to South.

So, amid a strange confusion of mind, the hours passed.

All this while had Pepper slept.  Presently, feeling lonely and distraught, I called to him, softly; but he took no notice.  Again, I called, raising my voice slightly; still he moved not.  I walked over to where he lay, and touched him with my foot, to rouse him.  At the action, gentle though it was, he fell to pieces.  That is what happened; he literally and actually crumbled into a mouldering heap of bones and dust.

For the space of, perhaps a minute, I stared down at the shapeless heap, that had once been Pepper.  I stood, feeling stunned.  What can have happened?  I asked myself; not at once grasping the grim significance of that little hill of ash.  Then, as I stirred the heap with my foot, it occurred to me that this could only happen in a great space of time.  Years—­and years.

Outside, the weaving, fluttering light held the world.  Inside, I stood, trying to understand what it meant—­what that little pile of dust and dry bones, on the carpet, meant.  But I could not think, coherently.