steppes of Uranus!” he added, with a glance upward; “I believe it is raining there too; it was, all the last week!”
“Why should that make it a grand time?” I asked.
“Because the animals there are all burrowers,” he answered, “—like the field-mice and the moles here.—They will be, for ages to come.”
“How do you know that, if I may be so bold?” I rejoined.
“As any one would who had been there to see,” he replied. “It is a great sight, until you get used to it, when the earth gives a heave, and out comes a beast. You might think it a hairy elephant or a deinotherium—but none of the animals are the same as we have ever had here. I was almost frightened myself the first time I saw the dry-bog-serpent come wallowing out—such a head and mane! and SUCH eyes!—but the shower is nearly over. It will stop directly after the next thunder-clap. There it is!”
A flash came with the words, and in about half a minute the thunder. Then the rain ceased.
“Now we should be going!” said the raven, and stepped to the front of the porch.
“Going where?” I asked.
“Going where we have to go,” he answered. “You did not surely think you had got home? I told you there was no going out and in at pleasure until you were at home!”
“I do not want to go,” I said.
“That does not make any difference—at least not much,” he answered. “This is the way!”
“I am quite content where I am.”
“You think so, but you are not. Come along.”
He hopped from the porch onto the grass, and turned, waiting.
“I will not leave the house to-day,” I said with obstinacy.
“You will come into the garden!” rejoined the raven.
“I give in so far,” I replied, and stepped from the porch.
The sun broke through the clouds, and the raindrops flashed and sparkled on the grass. The raven was walking over it.
“You will wet your feet!” I cried.
“And mire my beak,” he answered, immediately plunging it deep in the sod, and drawing out a great wriggling red worm. He threw back his head, and tossed it in the air. It spread great wings, gorgeous in red and black, and soared aloft.
“Tut! tut!” I exclaimed; “you mistake, Mr. Raven: worms are not the larvæ of butterflies!”
“Never mind,” he croaked; “it will do for once! I’m not a reading man at present, but sexton at the—at a certain graveyard—cemetery, more properly—in—at—no matter where!”
“I see! you can’t keep your spade still: and when you have nothing to bury, you must dig something up! Only you should mind what it is before you make it fly! No creature should be allowed to forget what and where it came from!”
“Why?” said the raven.
“Because it will grow proud, and cease to recognise its superiors.”
No man knows it when he is making an idiot of himself.
“Where DO the worms come from?” said the raven, as if suddenly grown curious to know.
“Why, from the earth, as you have just seen!” I answered.
“Yes, last!” he replied. “But they can’t have come from it first—for that will never go back to it!” he added, looking up.
I looked up also, but could see nothing save a little dark cloud, the edges of which were red, as if with the light of the sunset.
“Surely the sun is not going down!” I exclaimed, struck with amazement.
“Oh, no!” returned the raven. “That red belongs to the worm.”
“You see what comes of making creatures forget their origin!” I cried with some warmth.
“It is well, surely, if it be to rise higher and grow larger!” he returned. “But indeed I only teach them to find it!”
“Would you have the air full of worms?”
“That is the business of a sexton. If only the rest of the clergy understood it as well!”
In went his beak again through the soft turf, and out came the wriggling worm. He tossed it in the air, and away it flew.
I looked behind me, and gave a cry of dismay: I had but that moment declared I would not leave the house, and already I was a stranger in the strange land!
“What right have you to treat me so, Mr. Raven?” I said with deep offence. “Am I, or am I not, a free agent?”
“A man is as free as he chooses to make himself, never an atom freer,” answered the raven.
“You have no right to make me do things against my will!”
“When you have a will, you will find that no one can.”
“You wrong me in the very essence of my individuality!” I persisted.
“If you were an individual I could not, therefore now I do not. You are but beginning to become an individual.”
All about me was a pine-forest, in which my eyes were already searching deep, in the hope of discovering an unaccountable glimmer, and so finding my way home. But, alas! how could I any longer call that house HOME, where every door, every window opened into OUT, and even the garden I could not keep inside!
I suppose I looked discomfited.
“Perhaps it may comfort you,” said the raven, “to be told that you have not yet left your house, neither has your house left you. At the same time it cannot contain you, or you inhabit it!”
“I do not understand you,” I replied. “Where am I?”
“In the region of the seven dimensions,” he answered, with a curious noise in his throat, and a flutter of his tail. “You had better follow me carefully now for a moment, lest you should hurt some one!”
“There is nobody to hurt but yourself, Mr. Raven! I confess I should rather like to hurt you!”
“That you see nobody is where the danger lies. But you see that large tree to your left, about thirty yards away?”
“Of course I do: why should I not?” I answered testily.
“Ten minutes ago you did not see it, and now you do not know where it stands!”
“I do.”
“Where do you think it stands?”
“Why
