save for a sense of faint, happy laughter that wrapped about me, I heard
naught. And nothing more all that day.

Here let me put down that, because of my memories and half memories, I
would time and again dispute with our learned men; they being in doubt
as to the verity of that olden story of the Days of Light, and the
existence of the Sun; though something of all this was set out, as of
_truth_, in our oldest records; but I, remembering, told them many tales
that seemed fairy-like to them, and entranced their hearts, even whilst
I angered their brains, which refused to take seriously and as verity
that which their hearts accepted gladly, even as we receive the wonder
of poetry into our souls. But the Master Monstruwacan would listen to
aught I had to tell; aye! though I spoke through hours; and so it would
be, odd times, that having talked long, drawing my stories from my
Memory-Dreams, I would come back again into the present of that Future;
and lo! all the Monstruwacans would have left their instruments and
observations and recording, and be gathered about me; and the Master so
sunken in interest that he not to have discovered them; neither had I
noticed, being so full of the things which had been.

But when the Master came back to knowledge of that present, he would
rouse and chide, and they, all those lesser ones, would fly swiftly and
guiltily to their various works; and yet, so I have thought since, each
with a muddled and bewildered and thoughtful air upon him; and hungry
they were for more, and ever wondering and setting questions about.

And so it was also with those others--those learned ones who were not of
the Tower of Observation, and who disbelieved even whilst they hungered.
Listen would they, though I talked from the first hour, which was the
"dawn," to the fifteenth hour, which was the beginning of the "night";