Well, that I must leave, for I did not see them in their possession, but doubtless they were the proceeds of robberies ashore. IV. INTRODUCTION TO “A VISITOR FROM MARS.” The narrator of the following quaint story was a little man, very soberly dressed, and very timid in his demeanour. He appeared to be greatly in awe of his wife, of whom he spoke with due, or perhaps I might say undue, humility and deference. If his habiliments were sober, I am much afraid his habits were the reverse; his nose was very rubicund, and its bright colouring contrasted oddly with his coat, once black, but now tinged with a disreputable greenish hue. He sat in an awkward position on the very edge of the seat, acquiesced in everything I said, and was of such a feeble, backboneless character, that after he had consumed half a tumbler of whiskey at a gulp, I had no trouble in hypnotizing him (without even asking his consent) as he lolled back on the chair in a very drowsy condition. Slight hope was mine of eliciting anything like a story from this intemperate little gentleman, and it was an agreeable surprise, therefore, when he reeled off the following, which I will call “A Visitor from Mars.” A VISITOR FROM MARS. That a spirit could visit this earth from such a distant planet as Mars, my wife would not believe for a moment, explain it how I would. She required a proof, and proof I could have given her had she only attended to her household duties and kept my pockets in proper repair, instead of prying into things that did not concern her; beside, was not the verbal description of my shadowy visitor and his extraordinary conversation sufficient to convince any one but an obstinate woman that what I spoke was solid truth? Why should she imagine that the inordinately hot weather of the past summer had had such a soporific effect upon me, that, in wooing Morpheus, I simply _dreamed_ of my visitor? Why should she think that because I had my spirit flask with me during my afternoon ramble that I----?--but allow me, my intelligent reader, to lay my story before _you_, and I think you will bear me out that there is a foundation in it. To begin at the beginning. It was a hot, dreamy day in the middle of August, and I was staying at the old-fashioned, out-of-the-world, under-the-hill town of Minehead in Somersetshire. The atmosphere being too hot for sitting indoors, and the water much too clear for fishing, I thought I would take a stroll to Horner Woods, which lie under the great hills, just this side of Stoke Pero, and in the immediate neighbourhood of Dunkery Beacon, which is precisely one-third of a mile high. Opening my umbrella and using it as a sunshade, I wandered listlessly along the two or three miles which intervene between Minehead and my haunt, and took a long time in reaching the recumbent tree upon which I loved to sit and sketch or read. A more charming or solitary spot cannot be found in all the West Country.