of them? Why don't the stupid old world
burn wood? '

The fire had by this time sunk to dull red
embers and grey ashes, with large dark
chasms around and behind. The shadows
on the wall were faint, and shifting with
the flickering of the last candle, now dying
in the socket. Flashley's eyes were closed,
and his arms folded, as he still continued to
murmur to himself. Sooth to say, the ale
had got into his head.

'Margery, the housemaid, has large black
eyes, with dark rings of coal-grime round
them. Her hair is also black—her cap like a
mourning mop—and she has worn a black
patch on one side of her nose since last Friday,
when I gave her a handful from the coal-scuttle
for comparing me to the lazy young dog that lay
asleep before the fire. Margery Daw!—you
shall slide down to the lower regions,—on an
inclined plane, as the Useful Knowledge books
would say.

'Ale is a good thing when it is strong; but
a coal-mine is all nonsense. Still, they seem
to make money by it, and that's some excuse
—some reason for men wasting in work lives
which ought to be passed in pleasure. Human
time—human——I thought something
touched my elbow.

'Human time should not be passed——why
there it came again! I must be dreaming.

'Old Billy-Pitt Dalton understands brewing.
But human time should not be passed in
digging and groping, and diving and searching
—whether to scrape up coals, or what folks
call "knowledge." For the fuel of life burns
out soon enough of itself, and, therefore, it
should not be wasted over the baser material;
because the former is all for one's self, while
coal-fuel, and the search after it, is just working
for other people. Something did touch
my elbow! There's something astir in the
room out in the darkness! It was standing
at my side!'

Flashley made an effort to rise; but instead
of doing so, he fell sideways over one arm of
the chair, with his arms hanging down.
Staring up helplessly from this position, he
saw a heavy dwarfed figure with shining eyes,
coming out of the darkness of the room! He
could not distinguish its outline; but it was
elf-like, black, and had a rough rocky skin. It
had eyes that shot rays like great diamonds;
and through its coal-black naked body,
the whole of its veins were discernible, not
running with blood, but filled with stagnant
gold. Its step was noiseless, yet its weight
seemed so immense, that the floor slowly bent
beneath it; and, like ice before it breaks, the
floor bent more and more as the figure came
nearer.

At this alarming sight, Flashley struggled
violently to rise. He did so; but instantly
reeling half round, dropped into the chair,
with his head falling over the back of it. At
the same moment the ponderous Elfin took
one step nearer; and the whole floor sank
slowly down, with a long-drawn moan, that
ended in a rising and rushing wind, with
which Flashley felt himself borne away
through the air, fleeter than his fast-fleeing
consciousness.

In the progress of generations and cycles—
in that wealth and dispensation of Time
ordained by HIM, before whose sight 'one day
is as a thousand years, and a thousand years
as one day'—mere grains of sand running
through the glass that regulates the operations
of never-ending work—the bodies of all living
things, whether animal or vegetable, fulfil
their destinies by undergoing a gradual
transmutation into other bodies and things of the
most opposite kind to their own original being.
Original being, accurately to speak, there is
none; but we must call that thing original to
which some other thing is traced back as to
its ultimate point, or starting place, and at
which we are obliged to stop, not because it is
the end, but because we can go no further;
nevertheless, up to that antediluvian period,
and during a great part of it, we are moving
in the dusky yet demonstrable regions and
tracts of substantial facts, and scientific
knowledge.

Not daring to unclose his eyes, Flashley
gradually returned to consciousness, and heard a
voice speaking near to him, yet in tones that
seemed like the echoes of some great cavern or
deep mine.

'Man lives to-day,' said the voice—and
the youth felt it was the black Elfin, with the
diamond eyes and golden veins, that was speaking—
'man lives to-day, not only for himself
and those around him, but also that by his
death and decay fresh grass may grow in the
fields of future years,—and that sheep may
feed, and give food and clothing for the
continuous race of man. Even so the food of one
generation becomes the stone of another. And
the stone shall become a fuel—a poison—or a
medicine. Awake, young man!—awake from
the stupor of an ignorant and presumptuous
youth—and look around you!'

The young man, with no little trepidation,
opened his eyes. He found he was alone.
The strange being that had just spoken was
gone. He ventured to gaze on the scene that
surrounded him.

The place in which he found himself seemed
to partake, not in distinct proportions, but
altogether, so far as this was possible, of a
wild forest of strange and enormous trees—a
chaotic jungle—a straggling woodland, and a
dreary morass or swamp, intersected by a dark
river, that appeared to creep towards the sea
which embraced a part of the distant horizon
with a leaden arm. The moist mound whereon
he stood was covered with ferns of various
kinds—the comb-fern, the wedge-fern, the
tooth-fern, the nerve-fern—and of all sizes,
rising from a crumpled crest bursting through
the earth, to plants of a foot high, of several
feet, and thence up to lofty trees of forty or
fifty feet in height, with great stems and