with the coolness. We threw
ourselves down about the fire and made another futile effort to show
Percy Pound the Little Dipper. We had tried it often before, but he
could never be got past the big one.

"You see those three big stars just below the handle, with the bright
one in the middle?" said Otto Hassler; "that's Orion's belt, and the
bright one is the clasp." I crawled behind Otto's shoulder and sighted
up his arm to the star that seemed perched upon the tip of his steady
forefinger. The Hassler boys did seine-fishing at night, and they knew a
good many stars.

Percy gave up the Little Dipper and lay back on the sand, his hands
clasped under his head. "I can see the North Star," he announced,
contentedly, pointing toward it with his big toe. "Anyone might get lost
and need to know that."

We all looked up at it.

"How do you suppose Columbus felt when his compass didn't point north
any more?" Tip asked.

Otto shook his head. "My father says that there was another North Star
once, and that maybe this one won't last always. I wonder what would
happen to us down here if anything went wrong with it?"

Arthur chuckled. "I wouldn't worry, Ott. Nothing's apt to happen to it
in your time. Look at the Milky Way! There must be lots of good dead
Indians."

We lay back and looked, meditating, at the dark cover of the world. The
gurgle of the water had become heavier. We had often noticed a mutinous,
complaining note in it at night, quite different from its cheerful
daytime chuckle, and seeming like the voice of a much deeper and more
powerful stream. Our water had always these two moods: the one of sunny
complaisance, the other of inconsolable, passionate regret.

"Queer how the stars are all in sort of diagrams," remarked Otto. "You
could do most any proposition in geometry with 'em. They always look
as if they meant something. Some folks say everybody's fortune is all
written out in the stars, don't they?"

"They believe so in the old country," Fritz affirmed.

But Arthur only laughed at him. "You're thinking of Napoleon, Fritzey.
He had a star that went out when he began to lose battles. I guess the
stars don't keep any close tally on Sandtown folks."

We were speculating on how many times we could count a hundred before
the evening star went down behind the cornfields, when someone cried,
"There comes the moon, and it's as big as a cart wheel!"

We all jumped up to greet it as it swam over the bluffs behin