Summer passed. The star turned. Tumult of earthquake, flood and tornado was all over the land for days as before. But the surface was now much more stable; the houses were constructed with reference to these things; they were in the centre of the continental plains, not directly on the shore. There was no great damage done. The planet receded from the sun into the colder distance; the autumn haze settled for years upon its peaked hills; the leaves changed hue for all that long time; the sea grew cold and steely; the sun faded and diminished. “How will you endure the long winter?” said Regan to Rondah. “I do not mind the darkness.” “You do not know what it is yet!” Ah, Regan, not from seas and their snows, not from darkness and its despair comes the danger which is so great that even now you feel the horror of it upon your heart! Look otherwhere than at the purpling sky; look away from the barren and desolate mountains. It is not there, it is not there! Rondah was walking in the noonday light through the paths beside the lake. The wind soughed through the leafless boughs above her; the light had the color of a partial eclipse; the leaves rustled as she walked among them; they recalled the rustling leaves of that oak-shadowed path which was on Earth. Rondah wondered if it were there yet. Lifting her eyes, she saw a dark form moving swiftly across the cliffs upon the very summit of a distant mountain. She wondered at first who it was. Then she remembered it could be only Regan. How very fast he was moving over the difficult path. How he could have reached that distance and elevation in the short time since she left him Rondah could not think. She turned in the path; when she came again where she could see the cliffs, he was not there. When she entered the palace, Regan was reading in the library. A new supply of the works of the bird people had just been sent in from the printing establishment and Regan was delighted with some of the productions. “Look at these books, Rondah. Here is one in particular which is remarkable.” He placed the book in Rondah’s hand. “How long,” said Rondah, “have you been back?” “I have not been out to-day!” Rondah opened the book slowly, thinking, but, when she had thought, the red and gold volume fell from her nerveless hands; she sank upon a couch before the hearth and looked at the floor. “Were not you on the cliff?” “I? Certainly not!” “Some one was there—a man! I thought it was you!” “A man or a bird man?” “A man!” replied Rondah.