ity that
Soeren was more than a little startled.

"Yes, yes," was all Soeren said and slipped into the porch with his
cap between his hands. It was not often he took his hat off to any
one, but the two hundred crowns had given him respect for the
farmer. The people of Sands farm were a race who, if they did break
down their neighbor's fence, always made good the damage they had
done.

Soeren started off and ran over the fields. The money was more than
he and Maren had ever before possessed. All he had to do now was to
lay out the notes in front of her so as to make a show that she
might be impressed. For Maren had fixed her mind on the farmer's
son.

CHAPTER III

A CHILD IS BORN

There are a milliard and a half of stars in the heavens, and--as far
as we know--a milliard and a half of human beings on the earth.
Exactly the same number of both! One would almost think the old
saying was right,--that every human being was born under his own
star. In hundreds of costly observatories all over the world, on
plain and mountain, talented scientists are adjusting the finest
instruments and peering out into the heavens. They watch and take
photographic plates, their whole life taken up with the one idea: to
make themselves immortal with having discovered a new star. Another
celestial body--added to the milliard and a half already moving
gracefully round.

Every second a human soul is born into the world. A new flame is
lit, a star which perhaps may come to shine with unusual beauty,
which in any case has its own unseen spectrum. A new being, fated,
perhaps, to bestow genius, perhaps beauty around it, kisses the
earth; the unseen becomes flesh and blood. No human being is a
repetition of another, nor is any ever reproduced; each new being is
like a comet which only once in all eternity touches the path of
the earth, and for a brief time takes its luminous way over it--a
phosphorescent body between two eternities of darkness. No doubt
there is joy amongst human beings for every newly lit soul! And, no
doubt they will stand round the cradle with questioning eyes,
wondering what this new one will bring forth.

Alas, a human being is no star, bringing fame to him who discovers
and records it! More often, it is a parasite which comes upon
peaceful and unsuspecting people, sneaking itself into the
world--through months of purgatory. God help it, if into the bargain
it has not its papers in order.

Soerine's little o