Below us over the parapet of roof was the crowded countryside, wan and still in the starlight, with the thread of river beyond—a river of silver with the blue-white lights of its boats skimming the surface. A few planes were overhead, the small local airline from Albany skimming past with a whir of its fans. Dr. Weatherby chatted with us, rebuked me smilingly for running the 40 N late, and listened gravely, with occasional interested questions, to Jim’s vivid account of his world chase after the murderer, while Dolores snuggled up against him, thrilled, and timidly held his hand. “Well, well, you boys do have an interesting life. Youth coming forward. Youth can do anything—the world waits on youth.” “It did tonight,” said Alice, with a sly glance at me. I wondered what Dr. Weatherby wanted us for. He had not hinted at it. He had spoken of a morning meal, and then we must have some sleep. Then, abruptly he said, “I should not have sent for you unless it was important. It is. The fact that I need you—” He stopped as suddenly as he had begun. I don’t know why a great tenseness should have fallen upon us all. But it did. I felt it. And in the insuing silence little Dolores left Jim and crept to her grandfather, leaning against him. I began, lamely, “We came, of course—” * * * * * Dr. Weatherby was staring off at the stars moodily, with a look so far away I could have fancied he was gazing, not at the stars, but beyond them. And then he tore himself back, and smiled, lighting a cigarro, flipping the torch at me and asking me to step on it. “I have so much to tell you,” he said. “I hardly know how or where to begin. You know, of course, something of my life, my work. “Leonard, and you, Jim, I believe you’re familiar in a general way with what the physicists think of the atom? Radiant matter—these electro-rays that seem to solve everything and yet only add to the mystery? “You know that savants would tell us that space is curved; so Einstein told us years ago? Well, _I_ will tell you this. To-morrow, after you have slept, I believe I can make clear to you the real construction of our material universe.” His hand checked us. “I have been working since 1970 along these lines. Alice recently has been helping me. And then Dolores— “This child here, in the dark, it has been given her to see things denied to our science. Years and years ago a scientist proclaimed that _thoughts_ themselves are a mere vibration, like light and heat and sound, and all these mysterious rays and flying electrons—electricity itself. They are all the same, though we name them differently.” He had been talking swiftly, but quietly. “Tell them, Dolores.” “A big open space,” she said slowly. “Mountains and a broad valley. A cliffside. People there on a ledge. A young man and a young woman, very white and pale, with blood on the man’s face. They were standing on a height, with a dark cavern behind them.