George kept his cousin Peter to help him move back into
his house the beginning of the next week.

And that was the last I knew of any of them for
more than a year. At first I expected, each hour, to
hear that they had fallen somewhere. But time passed by,
and of such a fall, where man knows the world's surface,
there was no tale. I answered, as best I could, the
letters of their friends; by saying I did not know where
they were, and had not heard from them. My real thought
was, that if this fatal MOON did indeed pass our
atmosphere, all in it must have been burned to death in
the transit. But this I whispered to no one save to
Polly and Annie and Haliburton. In this terrible doubt
I remained, till I noticed one day in the "Astronomical
Record" the memorandum, which you perhaps remember, of
the observation, by Dr. Zitta, of a new asteroid, with an
enormous movement in declination.



III

FULFILMENT

Looking back upon it now, it seems inconceivable that
we said as little to each other as we did, of this
horrible catastrophe. That night we did not pretend to
sleep. We sat in one of the deserted cabins, now
talking fast, now sitting and brooding, without