The night scene all about me, how different it was from those to which I had been accustomed on Earth! Out of a pink sky flakes of frozen dew were gently falling, starching the arid, verdureless soil with a glistening coat of evanescent white. Along the river bank, tall, slender, lightly-rooted trees reached far up into the breathless air, but there was never the movement of a bough or the rustle of a leaf, except from the flutter of birds. Jungles of spindling reeds also towered from waste marshes, in testimony to the easy struggle which vegetable sap had been able to accomplish over a weak gravity. Everything was eloquent with the reminder that I was on a different world; but yet, when I looked up at the starry heavens, they were the same. All the familiar constellations, changing their positions through the night with the same stately dignity, were there. The Pleiades, Orion, the Great Bear, with his nose constantly pointed at the Pole Star, made me feel that, at least in the heavens, I was at home! Only the colour of the night, the two little moons, and the planets looked different. Great Jupiter, king of the Martian night, whose brilliancy, if not his size, outrivalled the pale moons; Saturn, with his tilted ring, was visible to the naked eye; and yon pearly blue star, just rising to announce the morning, was Earth. Earth, which I had so unwillingly left, would I ever see her again as anything but a Sun-attending star? Would I ever walk her familiar paths, and know my brother creatures there again? With this thought came over me an unspeakable sense of loneliness, a depressing home-sickness, an aching yearning for that life, tempestuous as it had been. And how I despised the monotony and lowness of the Martian life; how I loathed the spreading misery of the famine, and the vile and dreadful pestilences which it was begetting! How could I ever endure the four more slow years of it which I confidently expected to ensue? What would I not give to leave it all and return! I had retraced my steps, leapt the wall again, and as I approached our house was surprised to see, in the dim light of the coming morning, a figure standing guard at the doorway. He was a soldier, and on closer approach I saw that he wore a beard, which showed him to be a captain. But what surprised me far more was that he held awkwardly in his arms one of our loaded rifles. Here was certain treachery. Since he stood guard, he doubtless had soldiers within; and if they had found one firearm they must have found the others also. But how had they succeeded in finding them? A mere search never would have revealed their secret place. Some one who knew of their location must have disclosed it. Could it have been the doctor? Had they brought him back, and forced him to produce the arms?