Bruno was a small and silky water-spaniel, a charming beast in his way, but not especially welcome at this point of the conversation. "Very likely;" I slid over the subject. "The man knew that he would have a feeling how big and strong that tiger must be: and it gave him a shock to think what a fearful thing the beast would be there in the dark, with all the warm, damp smells of the plants in the air, and the strange noises. It would almost take away his breath to think what a mighty Being it must have taken to make anything so awful as a tiger." "Yes," the lad said so quietly that I let him think a little. He had snuggled up against my knee and laid hold of my fingers, and I knew some sense of the matter was working in him. After a moment or two I asked him if he could repeat the first verse of the poem as if he were the man who thought of the tiger in the jungle there, with fierce eyes shining out of the dark, and who had so clear an idea of the mighty creature that he couldn't help thinking what a wonderful thing it was that it could be created. The boy fixed his eyes on mine as if he were getting moved and half-consciously desired to be assured that I was utterly serious and sympathetic; and in his clear childish voice he repeated in a way that had really something of a thrill in it: "Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" "If a traveller were in the jungle in the dark night," I went on after a word of praise for his recitation, "I suppose he couldn't see much around him, the trees would be so thick. He'd have to look up to the sky to see anything but the tiger's eyes." "He'd see the stars there," the boy observed, just as I had hoped he would. "I've seen stars through the trees. I was out in the woods long after dark once." "Were you really? The man must have thought the stars looked like the eyes, as if when the animal was made the Creator went to the sky itself for that fire. Think of a Being that could rise to the very stars and take their light in His hand." "Ouf!" the small man cried naïvely. "I shouldn't want to take fire in my hand!" "The writer of the poem was thinking what a wonderful Being He must be that could do it; but that if He could make a creature like the tiger, He would be able to do anything." The boy reflected a moment, and then, with a frank look, asked: "Did the fire in a tiger's eyes really come out of the stars?"