and everything appeared faint, hard, and uncoloured.  The sun was obscured by masses of cloud which filled the whole sky.  This vapour was in violent and almost living motion.  It was thick in extension, but thin in texture; some parts, however, were far denser than others, as the particles were crushed together or swept apart by the motion.  The green sparks from the brook, when closely watched, could be distinguished individually, each one wavering up toward the clouds, but the moment they got within them a fearful struggle seemed to begin.  The spark endeavoured to escape through to the upper air, while the clouds concentrated around it whichever way it darted, trying to create so dense a prison that further movement would be impossible.  As far as Maskull could detect, most of the sparks succeeded eventually in finding their way out after frantic efforts; but one that he was looking at was caught, and what happened was this.  A complete ring of cloud surrounded it, and, in spite of its furious leaps and flashes in all directions—­as if it were a live, savage creature caught in a net—­nowhere could it find an opening, but it dragged the enveloping cloud stuff with it, wherever it went.  The vapours continued to thicken around it, until they resembled the black, heavy, compressed sky masses seen before a bad thunderstorm.  Then the green spark, which was still visible in the interior, ceased its efforts, and remained for a time quite quiescent.  The cloud shape went on consolidating itself, and became nearly spherical; as it grew heavier and stiller, it started slowly to descend toward the valley floor.  When it was directly opposite Maskull, with its lower end only a few feet off the ground, its motion stopped altogether and there was a complete pause for at least two minutes.  Suddenly, like a stab of forked lightning, the great cloud shot together, became small, indented, and coloured, and as a plant-animal started walking around on legs and rooting up the ground in search of food.  The concluding stage of the phenomenon he witnessed with his normal eyesight.  It showed him the creature’s appearing miraculously out of nowhere.

Maskull was shaken.  His cynicism dropped from him and gave place to curiosity and awe.  “That was exactly like the birth of a thought,” he said to himself, “but who was the thinker?  Some great Living Mind is at work in this spot.  He has intelligence, for all his shapes are different, and he has character, for all belong to the same general type....  If I’m not wrong, and if it’s the force called Shaping or Crystalman, I’ve seen enough to make me want to find out something more about him....  It would be ridiculous to go on to other riddles before I have solved these.”

A voice called out to him from behind, and, turning around, he saw a human figure hastening toward him from some distance down the ravine.  It looked more like a man than a woman.  He was rather tall, but nimble, and was clothed in a dark, frocklike garment that reached from the neck to below the knees.  Around his head was rolled a turban.  Maskull waited for him, and when he was nearer went a little way to meet him.