twenty feet high, mingled always in the steady order I have described, spelt out the ghastly message: "Show `I understand' on the Saw-Mill Flat." And every morning, as the eclipse ended, I saw the column creep along to the horizon, and again, as the duty of opening day, spell out the same:-- "Show `I understand' on the Saw-Mill Flat." They had done this twice in every twenty-four hours for nearly two years. For three nights steadily I read these signals twice each night; only these, and nothing more. But Friday night all was changed. After "Attention," that dreadful "Show" did not come, but this cheerful signal:-- "Hurrah. All well. Air, food, and friends! what more can man require? Hurrah." How like George! How like Ben Brannan! How like George's wife! How like them all! And they were all well! Yet poor _I_ could not answer. Nay, I could only guess what Haliburton had done. But I have never, I believe, been so grateful since I was born. After a pause, the united line of leapers resumed their jumps and hops. Long and short spelled out:-- "Your O. K. is twice as large as it need be." Of the meaning of this, lonely _I_ had, of course, no idea. "I have a power of seven hundred," continued George. How did he get that? He has never told us. But this I can see, that all our analogies deceive us,--of views of the sea from Mt. Washington, or of the Boston State House from Wachusett. For in these views we look through forty or eighty miles of dense terrestrial atmosphere. But Orcutt was looking nearly vertically through an atmosphere which was, most of it, rare indeed, and pure indeed, compared with its lowest stratum. In the record-book of my observations these despatches are entered as 12 and 13. Of course it was impossible for me to reply. All I could do was to telegraph these in the morning to Skowhegan, sending them to the care of the Moores, that they might forward them. But the next night showed that this had not been necessary. Friday night George and the others went on for a quarter of an hour. Then they would rest, saying, "two," "three," or whatever their next signal time would be. Before morning I had these despatches:-- 14. "Write to all hands that we are doing well. Langdon's baby is named Io, and Leonard's is named Phoebe." How queer that was! What a coincidence! And they had some humor there. 15 was: "Our atmosphere stuck to us. It weighs three tenths of an inch--our weight." 16. "Our rain-fall is regular as the clock. We have made a cistern of Kilpatrick." This meant the spherical chamber of that name. 17. "Write to Darwin that he is all right. We began with lichens and have come as far as palms and hemlocks."