The forest was full of shadows as a little girl hurried through it one summer evening in June. It was already eight o'clock and Sylvie wondered if her grandmother would be angry with her for being so late.

  Jeff Peters and Andy Tucker could never be trusted. One day, the two men decided to open a marriage business to make some quick and easy money. The first thing they did was to write an advertisement to be published in newspapers. Their advertisement read like this:

     The house was very still.  In the little room over the porch, the Lady in Black sat alone.  Near her, a child’s white dress lay across a chair.  On the floor at her feet lay a tiny pair of shoes.  A doll hung over a chair and a toy soldier occupied the little stand by the bed.

    Mister Mindon returned home for lunch. His wife Millicent was not at home. The servants did not know where she was.Mister Mindon sat alone at the table in the garden. He ate a small piece of meat and drank some mineral water. Mister Mindon always ate simple meals, because he had problems with his stomach. Why then did he keep a cook among his servants?  Because his wife Millicent liked to invite her friends to big dinners and serve them rare and expensive food and wine.

  One December night, a long, long time ago, a family sat around the fireplace in their home. A golden light from the fire filled the room. The mother and father laughed at something their oldest daughter had just said. The girl was seventeen, much older than her little brother and sister, who were only five and six years old.

I am a very old man. How old I do not know. It is possible I am a hundred, maybe more.  I cannot tell because I have never aged as other men do.

So far as I can remember, I have always been a man of about thirty.  I appear today as I did forty years ago.  Yet, I feel that I cannot go on living forever.  Someday I will die the real death from which there is no escape.  I do not know why I should fear death. I who have died two times and am still alive.

Last week we brought you the first of four programs called  “A Princess of Mars.”   Our story is from a series of books by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs.  They are science fiction stories, a mix of imagination and science.

Last week, we met John Carter who begins the story.  He enters a cave deep in the desert in the state of  Arizona.  There something happens.  He does not know how, but he has been transported to the Red Planet, Mars.

Another of the large air ships exploded high in the air. Members of the crew fell to the ground.  The huge ship lost control and began turning again and again.

Soon it was close to the ground.  The warriors climbed aboard the ship and began fighting the members of the crew who were still alive.  Soon the fighting stopped.  The warriors began taking everything from the ship.

At last, they brought a captive from deep within the ship.  Two of the warriors had their captive by each arm.   I wanted to see what new and strange form of life this creature would be.

 JOHN CARTER: The huge green warrior Tars Tarkas came slowly toward me with his thin sword.  I backed away.  I did not want to fight him.  I did not wish his death.  He had been as kind to me as a green Martian can be.

As I stood watching him, a rifle fired in the distance, then another and another.  Tars Tarkas and his warriors were under attack from another tribe of green warriors. 

Within seconds, a terrible battle raged.  As I watched, three of the attackers fell on Tars Tarkas.  He killed one and was fighting with the other two when he slipped and fell.

 I am an old lawyer, and I have three men working for me. My business continued to grow and so I decided to get one more man to help write legal papers.

I have met a great many people in my days, but the man who answered my advertisement was the strangest person I have ever heard of or met.

He stood outside my office and waited for me to speak. He was a small man, quiet and dressed in a clean but old suit of clothes. I asked him his name. It was Bartleby.