nt to talk to you, Miss Franklin. I want in talk
freely to you about something."

Edith's face expressed her astonishment.

"You look surprised," he continued, "but you will not be when I tell you
what it is. You are the only person whom I can rely on to manage the
matter well and to help me. It is connected with Neal Gordon."

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

AN EXPLANATION.

MAMMA. "Why do you come in every minute for something to eat, Herbert?"

HERBERT. "Because, mamma, I am so small that I cannot eat enough to last
me over an hour."

ON THE EARTH AND IN THE SKY.

THE EARTH YESTERDAY, TO-DAY, TO-MORROW.

BY N. S. SHALER,

PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

From ancient days men have been seeking to learn the history of the
earth; how it came to be set in the orderly array of the heavenly
bodies; how it has step by step come forth from the ancient chaos to the
existing perfection; how and to what end it is to go forward in ages
beyond our own. In this century many thousands of able men have been
engaged in these inquiries.

[Illustration: A RING THROWN FROM THE SUN FORMING A SEPARATE PLANET.]

The studies of astronomers have made it evident that in the olden days,
indeed before days began, at a time which is to be reckoned as many
hundred million years ago, the sun and the other bodies of the solar
system, including our earth, the kindred planets and their satellites,
were parts of a great mass of vapor or star dust, which extended
throughout the spaces in which these spheres now swing about the sun. As
time went on this nebulous mass, just like many such masses which the
telescope reveals in the distant heavens, drew together, because its
particles were impelled by gravitation towards the central point, and as
it contracted it began to revolve, much as our earth and the other
spheres as well now turn on their axes. Thus turning, it divided into
successively formed rings, each of which in time broke up, the matter of
the ring gathering into a separate planet. At first this planet, like
the original mass, was gaslike, and when separated from the sun it began
to gather in on itself, in most cases forming rings, which in time were
to alter into the lesser spheres--the moons. The earth and all the
planets lying further away from the sun have these little bodies about
them, but in one case, as if to show the stages of creation, the
unbroken ring remains, forming the magnificent circles which g