The water-jug being empty, Ayrault took it up, and, crossing the ridge of a small hill, descended to a running-brook. He had filled it, and was straightening himself, when the stone on which he stood turned, and he might have fallen, had not the bishop, of whose presence he had been unaware, stretched out his hand and upheld him.

"I thought you might need a little help," he said with a smile, "and so walked beside you, though you knew it not. Water is heavy, and you may not yet have become accustomed to its Saturnian weight."

"Many thanks, my master," replied Ayrault, retaining his hand. "Were it not that I am engaged to the girl I love, and am sometimes haunted by the thought that in my absence she may be forgetting me, I should wish to spend the rest of my natural life here, unless I could persuade you to go with me to the earth."

"By remaining here," replied the spirit, with a sad look, "you would be losing the most priceless opportunities of doing good. Neither will I go with you; but, as your distress is real, I will tell you of anything happening on earth that you wish to know."

"Tell me, then, what the person now in my thoughts is doing."

"She is standing in a window facing west, watering some forget-me-nots with a small silver sprinkler which has a ruby in the handle."

"Can you see anything else?"

"Beneath the jewel is an inscription that runs:

           'By those who in warm July are born
            A single ruby should be worn;
            Then will they be exempt and free
            From love's doubts and anxiety.'"

"Marvellous! Had I any doubts as to your prescience and power, they would be dispelled now. One thing more let me ask, however: Does she still love me?"

"In her mind is but one thought, and in her heart is an image--that of the man before me. She loves you with all her soul."

"My most eager wish is satisfied, and for the moment my heart is at rest," replied Ayrault, as they turned their steps towards camp. "Yet, such is my weakness by nature, that, ere twenty-four hours have passed I shall long to have you tell me again."

"I have been in love myself," replied the spirit, "and know the feeling; yet to be of the smallest service to you gives me far more happiness than it can give you. The mutual love in paradise exceeds even the lover's love on earth, for it is only those that loved and can love that are blessed.

"You can hardly realize," the bishop continued, as they rejoined Bearwarden and Cortlandt, "the joy that a spirit in paradise experiences when, on reopening his eyes after passing death, which is but the portal, he finds himself endowed with sight that enables him to see such distances and with such distinctness. The solar system, with this ringed planet, its swarm of asteroids, and its intra-Mercurial planets--one of which, Vulcan, you have already discovered--is a beautiful sight. The planets nearest the sun receive such burning rays that their surfaces are red-hot, and at the equator at perihelion are molten. These are not seen from the earth, because, rising or setting almost simultaneously with the sun, they are lost in its rays. The great planet beyond Neptune's orbit is perhaps the most interesting. This we call Cassandra, because it would be a prophet of evil to any visitor from the stars who should judge the solar system by it. This planet is nearly as large as Jupiter, being 80,000 miles in diameter, but has a specific gravity lighter than Saturn. Bode's law, you know, says, Write down 0, 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96. Add 4 to each, and get 4, 7, 10, 16, 28, 52, 100; and this series of numbers represents very nearly the relative distances of the planets from the sun. According to this law, you would expect the planet next beyond Neptune to be about 5,000,000,000 miles from the sun. But it is about 9,500,000,000, so that there is a gap between Neptune and Cassandra, as between Mars and Jupiter, except that in Cassandra's case there are no asteroids to show where any planet was; we must, then, suppose it is an exception to Bode's law, or that there was a planet that has completely disappeared. As Cassandra would be within the law if there had been an intermediary planet, we have good prima facie reason for believing that it existed. Cassandra takes, in round numbers, a thousand years to complete its orbit, and from it the sun, though brighter, appears no larger than the earth's evening or morning star. Cassandra has also three large moons; but these, when full, shine with a pale-grey light, like the old moon in the new moon's arms, in that terrestrial phenomenon when the earth, by reflecting the crescent's light, and that of the sun, makes the dark part visible. The temperature at Cassandra's surface is but little above the cold of space, and no water exists in the liquid state, it being as much a solid as aluminum or glass. There are rivers and lakes, but these consist of liquefied hydrogen and other gases, the heavier liquid collected in deep Places, and the lighter, with less than half the specific gravity of ether, floating upon it without mixing, as oil on water. When the heavier penetrates to a sufficient depth, the interior being still warm, it is converted into gas and driven back to the surface, only to be recondensed on reaching the upper air. Thus it may happen that two rains composed of separate liquids may fall together. There being but little of any other atmosphere, much of it consists of what you might call the vapour of hydrogen, and many of the well-known gases and liquids on earth exist only as liquids and solids; so that, were there mortal inhabitants on Cassandra, they might build their houses of blocks of oxygen or chlorine, as you do of limestone or marble, and use ice that never melts, in place of glass, for transparence. They would also use mercury for bullets in their rifles, just as inhabitants of the intra-Vulcan planets at the other extreme might, if their bodies consisted of asbestos, or were in any other way non-combustibly constituted, bathe in tin, lead, or even zinc, which ordinarily exist in the liquid state, as water and mercury do on the earth.