mbstone and grievously
wrought up over the way her sisters were neglecting their duty, so that
she laid yet another egg.

The widow picked up this egg and shook it also, and saw that it was even
fresher than the other one, and she made another curtsy to Gud and said:
"I perceive that you are a great fakir, but you are very clever, and so
I will make a cake for two and we shall eat it together, and perhaps
have a cup of tea, if there is any sugar in the house."

At last the cake was put into the oven. The fire of the oven waxed hot
and the cake began to rise nicely. And when it had risen above the top
of the pan and almost to the top of the oven, the dear little widow
opened the oven door ever so softly. As she peeked in, a nearby
constellation broke asunder; the crash of the breaking shook the
wobbling world like a great earthquake, the cottage jarred as with a
blow from the hand of wrath, and the cake fell and was ruined utterly.

Then the dear little widow began to weep because her cake had fallen,
and she was very angry through her tears and said: "What is the matter
and what happened and what ruined my cake?"

"I fear me, it is the storm outside," replied Gud.

"Then I think you ought to go out and stop it."

"I will," agreed Gud.

And he went out and stopped the storm, and while he was out he destroyed
the major portion of the local law of gravitation.

When he came back into the cottage, the moral little hen was all
a-cackling and the dear little widow was all a-smiling, for behold, the
hen was looking at the widow, who in her hand held the lightest cake she
had ever lifted.

After he had had his cake and eaten it, too, Gud returned to the
Impossible Curve, and as he reached it, Fidu came romping forth to meet
him.

Chapter XVI

As Gud passed on along the way he saw a white-haired man sitting in a
window of the sky and writing with a tattered goose quill pen, which he
dipped into a pool of blood.

He was a sad old man with gloomy eye,
Who wrote with slow and studied inference,
Heaving the while some long and doleful sigh,
Or staring about with bored indifference.

Around his body there were ragged clothes
As hung upon a scarecrow in the corn,
And on his coat was pinned a withered rose,
From which he slowly plucked each barbed thorn.

Gud stopped upon his way and questioned him.
"I am a lonely soul," the old man said,
"Within this ro