These two principal witnesses therefore being no longer available, there remains none to whom I can apply for information, none with whom it would prove worth my while to communicate. It lies therefore with myself alone to deal as I may think fit with the manuscript, which is practically a continuation or sequel of the extraordinary story already accepted and published as solid truth by Mr Cayley. This second manuscript was found by me under circumstances I shall presently relate in the bedroom of a sea-side inn in South Wales. With the narrative was also a letter addressed to me wherein the writer thanked me in warm and sincere language for the small amount of assistance and sympathy it had been my privilege to vouchsafe to him during our past twelve weeks of companionship on Earth, but the contents of the letter shed no further light on the subject-matter of the manuscript. In addition to these there was a copy of Mr Cayley's book, which is already become so scarce as to be almost unattainable. The contents of this little volume I have therefore placed at the beginning of the present publication, so that the reader can follow in due sequence all the amazing adventures of the writer from the date of his first departure from the Earth to the stars until the very moment when he voluntarily chose a second time to quit this planet in order to resume a state of sovereignty whose tragical interruption he has already described with his own pen. * * * * * I have always reckoned myself with perfect contentment as a private person of no importance; _de me igitur nefas omninò loqui_. Nevertheless, I have been propelled willy-nilly into obtruding some portion of my personal affairs before the public and in what I conceive to be the public's true interest. For I myself have been requisitioned, so to speak, for the solution of some gigantic problem which is of deep import to our race, and my realisation of this unsought attention on my part must serve as my excuse for the short biographical details that follow.