“Thank God they live!” cried Isabella. “They are not dead!” “I wish they were! Look at the heads!” “All mixed up!” said Isabella, with a philosophical acceptance of the inevitable. “Regan, we will encase them in the pods and the heads will graft themselves to their proper places!” So this was what they did. They corrected the misappropriation of heads, set them on the necks and sewed the ten bird men securely into ten empty pods. “They will emerge at blossoming time with their troubles ended! I hope you will not experiment again!” Regan said nothing. She had not seen the vision; she did not mention it. He left his sister and went to ponder upon his eventful day. Isabella, as soon as she was alone, proceeded to experiment on her own account. Gathering the little heads which had been severed from the bodies she put each one into a pod. “Whatever they may come to I do not know,” she said to herself; “but I will not help to kill anything! I don’t want deathless heads rolling about this bewitched planet after me!” CHAPTER XIII. CAN WE GO BACK? Roy and Isabella were watching the Earth rise, when Regan, having assured himself of his powerful friend’s assistance, came to tell them of their leaving the star. He pitied their homesickness. It was he who had robbed them of a life’s happiness. There had been no particular gift to them from the star. They could see the continents now upon the world. “Would you like to go back, Roy?” Roy did not answer. The whisper which never left him held him from replying; he only looked sharply at Regan and listened to the words, “Duped, duped!” in his own ear. Isabella answered: “Would we return? Oh! gladly, yes! A world in possession does not make a woman happy! How tired I am of these rainbow seas! I wish I could look at still blue water! How tired I am of these flying people! I wish I could see Rondah’s old grandmother hobble by with her crutch! I am disgusted with the possession of gold and silver and glass—of wealth and station where these things are worth nothing! I am smothered in these low clouds, in the hot breath of this uncooled planet! Regan, you do not jest? We can go back?” “Yes; we shall go back to-morrow!” Next morning a huge meteorite, a mile in circumference, hung, enveloped in a heavy cloud, above the surface of the star. Father Renaudin would not return. He could not leave his people and his cathedrals. He gave orders for several sacred books, which Regan was to procure for him if he could do so. “My place on the Earth is gone from me,” he said. “God is most kind. He gave to me a small sphere and more time. I shall belt this star with one holy faith.” Isabella wondered that he was more pleased with his distracting congregations of elf men without much understanding than with all the assemblages of grand, sinless bird men.