speaking, perhaps, for hours. Riding back the next day
to meet the women and children, we still brooded, or we
discussed this "if," that "if," and yet others. But
after we had once opened it all to them,--and when we
had once answered the children's horribly naive
questions as best we could,--we very seldom spoke to
each other of it again. It was too hateful, all of it,
to talk about. I went round to Tom Coram's office one
day, and told him all I knew. He saw it was dreadful
to me, and, with his eyes full, just squeezed my hand,
and never said one word more. We lay awake nights,
pondering and wondering, but hardly ever did I to
Haliburton or he to me explain our respective notions
as they came and went. I believe my general impression
was that of which I have spoken, that they were all
burned to death on the instant, as the little aerolite
fused in its passage through our atmosphere. I believe
Haliburton's thought more often was that they were
conscious of what had happened, and gasped out their
lives in one or two breathless minutes,--so horribly
long!--as they shot outside of our atmosphere. But it
was all too terrible for words. And that which we could
not but think upon, in those dreadful waking nights, we
scarcely whispered even to our wives.

Of course I looked and he looked for the miserable
thing. But we looked in vain. I returned to the few
subscribers the money which I had scraped together
towards whitewashing the moon,--"shrouding its guilty
face with innocent white" indeed! But we agreed to spend