interested," he continued, "I have other wares in my shop. Here are the captain's hedge-scissors, here is a plummet with which one can sound the lowest depths of the firmament and the Milky Way. Here are the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. But you have no time, and I won't detain you." The chandler closed the glass door on them; but they saw him with his nose flattened against the pane, mysteriously, as if he still had something to sell, holding his finger to his mouth, shaped like a carp's. His lips seemed to be framing certain words. Frederick understood _legno santo_, Toilers of the Light, and even what his uncle had said about "up with you in the dismal air." But Peter Schmidt thrust his fist through the glass door, pulled Rasmussen's embroidered cap off his head, took from it a little key, and beckoned Frederick to come away with him. They left the houses behind and stepped out into the open rolling country. "The thing is," said Peter, "it will mean a lot of trouble." And they ran and climbed for hours. Evening fell. They lit a fire, and slept in a tree rocking in the wind. Morning came. They took to wandering again, until the sun lay low on the horizon. Finally, Peter opened a small gate in a low wall. On the other side of the wall was a garden. A gardener was tying vines. "How do you do, Doctor?" he said. "The sun is setting, but we know why we die." On looking at him more closely, Frederick recognised the dead stoker in the man, whose face was illuminated by the rosy flush of the setting sun and wore a friendly smile, as he stood there in what was a strange garden, or vineyard, or fairy-land. "I'd rather be doing this than shovelling coal," said the stoker, pointing to the cords hanging in his hands, with which he had been tying up the vines. The three of them together now walked a rather long distance to a wild section of the garden, where it had turned completely dark. The wind began to rush, and the shrubs, trees and bushes of the garden swished like breakers on the shore. The stoker beckoned to them, and they squatted on the ground in a circle. It seemed as if the stoker with his bare hand had taken a bit of burning wood from his pocket. He held it close to the ground, to illuminate a round opening, something like the burrow of a marmot or a rabbit. "_Legno santo_," said Peter Schmidt, pointing to the glowing piece of charcoal. "Now, Frederick, you will get to see those ant-like little elves that are called _noctiluci_ or night-lights. They pompously call themselves Toilers of the Light. But whatever their name, it must be admitted that they are the ones that take the light hidden in the entrails of the earth, store it up, and sow it in fields, the soil of which has been especially prepared; and when it has grown to its full size and has borne fruit a hundredfold in the shape of gold sheaves or nuggets, they harvest it and save it for the darkest of dark times."