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73 CHAPTER III.

WELCOME HOME.

FINISHED the first prayer that for ages, perchance, had arisen from that dead world, and then I set my ether car homewards, and plunged out again into vast and boundless space, not to earth, but to our bright world.

At length, when some time had elapsed, such as men would count by weeks or months, our glorious world opened to my view, with its soft tints, and white, misty clouds, lighted by the sun's blaze,—and, here and there, the long ridges or the lofty peaks of the mountains.

As I drew nearer it, thoughts of home gathered around me. "Why had I left a world so lovely and so happy to dwell, even for a while, on one so fallen and so sad as earth is, or so utterly dead as its lifeless satellite,—the twin homes of sin and death? Yet, on the other hand, I had succeeded in my enterprise, and entirely so. I had visited