"As we make our dogs do work?" Koogah asked, with sceptic twinkle in his
eye.

"Ay, as we make our dogs do work."

"And how do they breed these--these things?" Opee-Kwan questioned.

"They breed not at all. Men fashion them cunningly of iron, and feed
them with stone, and give them water to drink. The stone becomes fire,
and the water becomes steam, and the steam of the water is the breath of
their nostrils, and--"

"There, there, O Nam-Bok," Opee-Kwan interrupted. "Tell us of other
wonders. We grow tired of this which we may not understand."

"You do not understand?" Nam-Bok asked despairingly.

"Nay, we do not understand," the men and women wailed back. "We cannot
understand."

Nam-Bok thought of a combined harvester, and of the machines wherein
visions of living men were to be seen, and of the machines from which
came the voices of men, and he knew his people could never understand.

"Dare I say I rode this iron monster through the land?" he asked
bitterly.

Opee-Kwan threw up his hands, palms outward, in open incredulity. "Say
on; say anything. We listen."