Toffee's flaming head without further delay. "Let's get a cup of coffee," he suggested helplessly. "My head's chiming like Big Ben at midnight."

"All right," Toffee agreed, reaching for the elevator button.

"No! Not that!" Marc yelled. "The way that young fiend in there operates that thing, I'd be lucky to get downstairs with the top of my head still on. Let's take the stairs."

As together, they started down the carpeted stairway, Marc became pensive. Even if the matter of the brief case had been settled, his trouble with Julie was still as bad as it had been the day before ... probably worse, for all he knew. Then too, there was the problem of Toffee. Matters certainly wouldn't improve with her around. His troubled conjecture came to an abrupt end at the sound of Toffee's anxious voice.

"Look out!" she cried. "Look out for that tear in the carpet!"

"What did you...." Whatever Marc was going to say, was lost for good, as the toe of his shoe slipped under the torn carpet, for in the next instant he was flying, head first, down the length of the stairs, steps flashing past his face like box cars on a fast freight. Down and down he fell, on and on, and then, looking away from the stairs for a brief moment, he could see that he was heading into a dense, black fog, that obscured the bottom of the stairway.

As he drew close to this fog, it seemed to reach toward him and swallow him up, and then he found that he was falling through a great, unknown region, that was devoid of all light. He wondered where the floor had gone.

When finally he came to rest, Marc couldn't calculate how long he had been falling; it seemed an endless period. Wonderingly, he sat up, and looked around him for some bit of light, some reassuring bit of brightness that would tell him he hadn't lost his sight. Even as he searched, however, the fog began to lift, becoming lighter and lighter, until there was nothing left of it except a soft blue mist. Immediately, his surroundings were familiar this time. The valley was just as comforting and lovely as he had remembered it.

"It hardly seems fair!" came Toffee's petulant voice, and turning, Marc discovered her standing just behind him.

"What hardly seems fair?" he asked, rising to his feet.

"That I only got to materialize for a single night this time. The way you 

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