The next night it rained--a heavy, pelting downpour. For a mile or more around the field the hissing of steam could be heard as the rain struck the light. The next morning was clear, and still we saw no change in the light. Then, a week later, came the cold spell of 1940. Surpassing in severity the winters of 1888 and 1918, it broke all existing records of the Weather Bureau. The temperature during the night of November 20, at Brookline, fell to thirty degrees below zero. During this night the fire was seen to dwindle gradually in size, and by morning it was entirely extinguished. No other meteors fell that winter; and, as their significance remained unexplained, public interest in them soon died out. The observatories at Harvard, Flagstaff, Cordoba, and the newer one on Table Mountain, near Cape Town, all reported the appearance of several new stars, flaring into prominence for a few hours and visible just after sunset and before dawn, on several nights during November. But these published statements were casually received and aroused only slight general comment. Then, in February, 1941, came the publication of Professor Newland's famous theory of the Mercutian Light--as the fire was afterward known. Professor Newland was at this time the foremost astronomer in America, and his extraordinary theory and the predictions he made, coming from so authoritative a source, amazed and startled the world. His paper, couched in the language of science, was rewritten to the public understanding and published in the newspapers of nearly every country. It was an exhaustive scientific deduction, explaining in theory the origin of the two meteors that had fallen to earth two months before. In effect Professor Newland declared that the curious astronomical phenomena of the previous November--the new "stars" observed, the two meteors that had fallen with their red and green light-fire--were all evidence of the existence of intelligent life on the planet Mercury. I give you here only the more important parts of the paper as it was rewritten for the public prints: ... I am therefore strongly inclined to accept the theory advanced by Schiaparelli in 1882, in which he concluded that Mercury rotates on its axis once in eighty-eight days. Now, since the sidereal revolution of Mercury, _i.e._, its complete revolution around the sun, occupies only slightly under eighty-eight days, the planet always presents the same face to the sun. On that side reigns perpetual day; on the other--the side presented to the earth as Mercury passes us--perpetual night. The existence of an atmospheric envelope on Mercury, to temper the extremes of heat and cold that would otherwise exist on its light and dark hemispheres, seems fairly certain. If there were no atmosphere on the planet, temperatures on that face toward the sun would be extraordinarily high--many hundred degrees hotter than the boiling point of water.