All the long night of the 13th, and even for several hours of the 14th, he never quitted the telescope for a single instant.

The midnight sky was in magnificent order; not a speck dimmed its azure of an intensely dark tint.

The stars blazed out like fires; the Moon refused none of her secrets to the scientists who were gazing at her so intently that night from the platform on the summit of Long's Peak.

But no black spot crawling over her resplendent surface rewarded their eager gaze.

Marston indeed would occasionally utter a joyful cry announcing some discovery, but in a moment after he was confessing with groans that it was all a false alarm.