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Rh I come to inform and counsel and help you." He spoke the English language with a very sweet and firm intonation, and yet his accent was in some way suggestive of an outland or foreign origin. "I am a friend," he said, "and in some sort a guide of men. It was my mission long ages ago to warn your first father of the designs of an enemy of the same order as this one of yours, but far mightier than he. Later on in the plains of Assyria, under the name and form of a man, I baffled the designs of another of the same evil race. And many times in more modern days I have rendered help of which no record remains to man and to the friends of man. Speak to me freely; you may call me Leäfar."

I was meditating whether or not I should begin with a confession of my own faults, when Jack stepped forward, prevented me, and spoke.

"Sir Leäfar," he said, "tell us first of all who these men are into whose power we seem to have fallen, and from whom we desire to escape."

"Yes," answered he who called himself Leäfar, "it is best that you should have information first; counsel and help will follow.

"These men and I have one thing in common. We are inhabitants not of earth, but of ether; as they have themselves told you, we are dwellers in space. But