“At last Jack’s rivals entered into a conspiracy to “do him up.” They would beat and tar and feather him at the very least and if he provoked them by resistance they would do worse. So they planned, and one summer evening when Jack and Lucy were taking their usual loving promenade, these disappointed suitors took after them. But the lovers stimulated by a panic of sudden terror made a miraculous race and distanced their pursuers. The latter declared that the lovers did not run at all in fact, but glided along in some miraculous way not touching the ground, but gradually rising and sailing off getting constantly higher and higher, they at last disappeared behind a cloud. And they all declared that there could not be the least doubt that they had been translated to the sky to associate with the innumerable stars that had gone before them. There was nothing at all incredible in this to the Martian people, because it was a cardinal principle of their religion that their great heroes in ancient times had all been transferred from Mars to the sky. The proof was patent to anybody that had eyes, for there they were to be seen without any change of form, some with six radiating limbs and some with five. And these two hostile races carried their resentments to heaven with them and often engaged in direful warfare, hurling at each other thunderbolts, meteors and aerolites as might be seen almost daily or nightly. The celestial history of the lovers is tragic. They no longer had to walk, because there being nothing much to walk on, the celestial mode of locomotion is a delicious glide, consequently they were able occasionally to give their lips a rest, and hand in hand to quietly slip along with the glittering crowd thinking of nothing whatever unless it were of each other. But this happiness at last came to a sad ending. They were sauntering along as thoughtless and careless as children, when suddenly and without the least warning, an immense aerolite came dashing through the sky and before Lucy even perceived it, it crashed into her face knocking out every one of her pretty eyes, smashing her lips and disfiguring her in the most terrible manner. In the confusion she was separated from her companion, and when she sought him, distracted by pain and blindness she took the wrong track, and from that day to this she skurries across the sky in the most feverish haste, rising in the west sailing overhead and setting in the east from two to three times a day, while all the other stars including the sun, and Jack with the rest, rise in the east and set in the west. As for Jack, when he found how changed and hideous she had become—his love turned to aversion. When she sought him, he avoided her, and passed by far on the other side. And now, although they pass each other every few hours he always looks the other way and she, poor thing, cannot see him. “There used to be a serious dispute among the Martians as to the particular sort of star that threw that rock.