Now, the errand which one goes on sometimes has a great deal to do
with what he finds at the end of it. I don't mean to say that the Star
had anything to do with it at all, or that it knew right from wrong.
But this is certain; on its last journey Umpl was seeking only a home
where he and Sptz might live and find food in a time of famine. But
now he was seeking to harm people who had never even heard of him; and
if bad fortune befell, the errand itself was not good enough to
deserve a better.

A wise man long afterward once wrote down the words of Jesus, "They
who live by the sword shall perish by the sword," and it is a good
saying. Thus it happened, that, after a wild hunt through the silent
forests to the northwest for many weeks, one day they found a village
which was all too strong for them. It was like arousing a hornet's
nest. Umpl got out of it safely enough, with an arrow hole or two here
and there where they did not count. But he did not have so many to
lead back home again; and the Iron Star, alas! was lost, captured by
the enemy. Umpl never laid eyes on it again.

Neither did Umpl's son. But the son of Umpl's son knew all about it,
as far as any one person knew; for in the long nights when the water
rippled lazily up against the mossy logs beneath the huts, and the
evening smoke curled upward from the after-supper fires, then was the
time for stories of great marvels in the days of old; and Umpleton, as
the boy was called, knew well that far in the northwest was the Star
that once had made the fortune of his family. So, when he in his turn
was partly grown up, he packed up a sack full of cakes, as his
grandfather had done, took another full of beautiful bronze knives and
trinkets which he himself had made, and the Star-club, which Umpl had
never lost. With these he started off on a trading expedition. Times