The coincidence amused me faintly,
but I could not pluck up the least hope that the effect which I had
experienced was anything other than an illusion, an illusion liable
to be explained (as every illusion is in these days) by some of the
philosophers who guess at Nature's riddles. It would have been
sweeter to believe that my kneeling mother by some pious
enchantment had asked, and found, this spell to rouse me from my
scandalous forgetfulness of God's holy day, but my fancy was too
weak to carry a faith like that. Indeed, the vale through which
the bells of Marlen send their song is a highly respectable vale,
and its people (save one, two, or three) are wholly unaddicted to
the practice of magical arts.
After the fifth day of my journey I no longer travelled over
shifting hills, but came upon a dead level, a dead level bed of
sand, quite hard, and studded with small shining pebbles.
The heat grew fierce; there was no valley nor hollow, no hill, no
mound, no shadow of hill nor of mound, by which I could mark the
way I was making. Hour by hour I advanced, and saw no change--I
was still the very centre of a round horizon; hour by hour I
advanced, and still there was the same, and the same, and the same-
-the same circle of flaming sky--the same circle of sand still
glaring with light and fire.
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