"_This_," said Ben, pointing to one of the dark lines in the cometic
spectrum, "_this_ is produced by the vapor of carbon in the nucleus of
the heavenly visitant. You will observe that it differs but slightly
from the lines that come of volatilized iron. Examined with this
magnifying glass"--adjusting that instrument to his eye--"it will
probably show--by Jove!" he ejaculated, after a nearer view, "it isn't
carbon at all. _It is_ MEAT!"

"Of course," proceeded William, "of course Perry Chumly did not have any
cañon, so what did the fellow do but let himself down with his arms and
legs to the bottom of an old well, about thirty feet deep! And, with the
cold water up to his middle, and the frogs, pollywogs and aquatic
lizards quarreling for the cosy corners of his pockets, there he stood,
waiting for the sun to appear in the field of his 'instrument' and be
eclipsed."

"Ben, you are joking," I remarked with some asperity; "you are taking
liberties with science, Benjamin. It _can't_ be meat, you know."

"I tell you it _is_ though," was his excited reply; "it is just _meat_,
I tell you! And this other line, which at first I took for sodium, is
_bone_--bone, sir, or I'm an asteroid! I never saw the like; that comet
must be densely peopled with butchers and horse-knackers!"

"When Perry Chumly had waited a long time," William went on to say,
"looking up and expecting every minute to see the sun, it began to get
into his mind, somehow, that the bright, circular opening above his
head--the mouth of the well--_was_ the sun, and that the black disk of
the moon was all that was needed to complete the expected phenomenon.
The notion soon took complete obsession of his brain, so that he forgot