the sheltering dark. But
on the third night the moon came out as they met face to face, each with
his arms filled with sheaves. On that spot, says the legend, was built the
Temple of Jerusalem, for it was esteemed that there earth came nearest
heaven.

THE STRAND FROM ABOVE

From the Danish of JOHANNES JORGENSEN

The sun rose on a bright September morning. A thousand gems of dew
sparkled in the meadows, and upon the breeze floated, in the wake of
summer, the shining silken strands of which no man knoweth the whence or
the whither.

One of them caught in the top of a tree, and the skipper, a little
speckled yellow spider, quit his airship to survey the leafy demesne
there. It was not to his liking, and, with prompt decision, he spun a new
strand and let himself down straight into the hedge below.

There were twigs and shoots in plenty there to spin a web in, and he went
to work at once, letting the strand from above, by which he had come, bear
the upper corner of it.

A fine large web it was when finished, and with this about it that set it
off from all the other webs thereabouts, that it seemed to stand straight
up in the air, without anything to show what held it. It takes pretty
sharp eyes to make out a single strand of a spider-web, even a very little
way off.

The days went by. Flies grew scarcer, as the sun rose later, and the
spider had to make his net larger that it might reach farther and catch
more. And here the strand from above turned out a great help. With it to
brace the structure, the web was spun higher and wider, until it covered
the hedge all the way across. In the wet October mornings, when it hung
full of shimmering raindrops, it was like a veil stitched with precious
pearls.

The spider was proud of his work. No longer the little thing that had come
drifting out of the vast with nothing but its unspun web in its pocket, so
to speak, he was now a big, portly, opulent spider, with the largest web
in the hedge.

One morning he awoke very much out of sorts. There had been a frost in the
night, and daylight brought no sun. The sky was overcast; not a fly was
out. All the long gray autumn day the spider sat hungry and cross in his
corner. Toward evening, to kill time, he started on a tour of inspection,
to see if anything needed bracing or mending. He pulled at all the
strands; they were firm enough. But though he found nothing wrong, his
temper did not improve; he waxed crosser than e