"I know--" began the Child, but checked himself at once with a
deprecating glance of apology.

"Except for the dancing wonder of the light," continued Uncle Andy,
graciously pretending not to hear the interruption, "nothing stirred in
all that emptiness of naked space. Of life there was not the least sign
anywhere. This appeared the very home of death and intolerable cold.
Yet at one spot, between two little, almost indistinguishable ridges of
snow, might have been noticed a tiny wisp of vapor. If one had put his
face down close to the snow, so that the vapor came between his eyes and
the light, he would have made it out quite distinctly. And it would have
certainly seemed very puzzling that anything like steam should be coming
up out of that iron-bound expanse."

Now the Child had once seen, in the depth of winter, a wreath of mist
arising from the snowy rim of an open spring, and for the life of him he
could not hold his tongue.

"It was a boiling spring," he blurted out.

Uncle Andy gazed at him for some seconds in a disconcerting silence, till
the Child felt himself no bigger than a minute.

"It was a bear," he announced at length coldly. Then he was silent again.

And the Child, mortified at having made such a bad guess, was silent too,
in spite of his pangs of curiosity at this startling assertion.

"You see," went on Uncle Andy, after he was satisfied that the Child was
not going to interrupt again, at least for the moment, "you see, under