ught the stars,
praying to them and asking them to listen to the voice of the
water, and to the voice of the oaks and to the whispers of the
grasses, and to tell him why the fire of earth was red, while
the fire of the stars was white.

"Now, while this man besought the stars, to him a strange thing
happened. As he looked up he saw falling from the heavens above
him a ray of the white light of the stars. It fell near to him
and lay shining like a jewel in the grass. To this the man ran
at once, gladly, and took up the white light, and put it in his
bosom, that the winds might not harm it. Always this man kept
the white light in his bosom after that. And by its light he saw
many things which till that time men had never known. This man
found that this new light, with the red light that had been
known, filled all his house with a great radiance, so that small
strifes were not so many, and so that life became plain and
sweet. This then that you see is that Home.

"This that you see around you," it continued slowly, "the large
trees and the green grass, and the blue sky and the smiling
waters, all this is wealth; wealth not corporate, wealth
valuable, wealth that belongs to every man ever born upon the
earth, and which can not of right ever be taken away from him.
Shorn of that, he is poor indeed, though not so poor as he who
shore him. Unshorn of this, he is rich. In our land our hearts
ache to see these terms misused, and that called wealth which is
so far from worth the having. But here, where I have brought
you, you shall see humanity undwarfed, and you shall see peace
and largeness in the life which you once thought small and
sordid."

[Illustration]

Then as I looked, there stepped from the house a man, or one
whom I took to be a man. This man stood in the cool, fresh
morning, and gazed at the sun, now rising above the tops of the
great trees. He smiled gently, and taking in each hand a little
water from a tiny stream that flowed near by, he raised his
hands, and still smiling, offered tribute of the water to the
sun. I saw the water falling down from his hands in a small
stream of silver drops, shining brightly. It was the way of the
land, the Singing Mouse said; for they thought that as the water
came from the sky and returned to it, so did man and the
thoughts of man, and the fruits of his progress; never to be
destroyed.

At all this I looked almost in fear, for the thought came that
perhaps this was no