of the fellow, which brought him close to the stranger's feet. Soon after
he raised his carving and laid it across the man's knee.

"Yes, I will tell you," he muttered; "I will tell you all about it."

He put his finger on the grotesque little mannikin at the bottom (ah! that
man who believed nothing, hoped nothing, felt nothing; how he loved him!),
and with eager finger the fellow moved upward, explaining over fantastic
figures and mountains, to the crowning bird from whose wing dropped a
feather. At the end he spoke with broken breath--short words, like one who
utters things of mighty import.

The stranger watched more the face than the carving; and there was now and
then a show of white teeth beneath the moustaches as he listened.

"I think," he said blandly, when the boy had done, "that I partly
understand you. It is something after this fashion, is it not?" (He
smiled.) "In certain valleys there was a hunter." (He touched the
grotesque little figure at the bottom.) "Day by day he went to hunt for
wild-fowl in the woods; and it chanced that once he stood on the shores of
a large lake. While he stood waiting in the rushes for the coming of the
birds, a great shadow fell on him, and in the water he saw a reflection.
He looked up to the sky; but the thing was gone. Then a burning desire
came over him to see once again that reflection in the water, and all day
he watched and waited; but night came and it had not returned. Then he
went home with his empty bag, moody and silent. His comrades came
questioning about him to know the reason, but he answered them nothing; he
sat alone and brooded. Then his friend came to him, and to him he spoke.

"'I have seen today,' he said, 'that which I never saw before--a vast white