“Well?” I inquired that evening. “Art thou satisfied about the existence of _these_ goblins?” He turned two very sad eyes upon me; then replied: “I never knew there were things alive and yet too small to kill. Living things that could destroy a man, but whose smallness saved them from our wrath! I have been thinking of them the whole day long. In size those little worms are about in the same relation to the ant as the ant to us. A drop of water, which they in their infinitesimality cannot see, is enough to drown millions of them. A little child passes over an ant-hill and under its little sole destroys the work of a whole season of millions of them. The ants do not understand what has crushed them. They only feel its power. They are too small to see the child from sole to head as a whole being. They only feel its strength. You blow your softest breath, and it is like a devastating hurricane. “If we stand in the same relation to some other bigger being as those little worms stand to the ant and the ant to ourselves, when one of those huge beings moves its hand, a great storm arises, a tempest. A drop of sweat falls from his brow, and our fields are inundated; it forms a lake, a river upon which sail large ships. He looks at us, at all of us, because we too are too small to be seen singly and--we have light! We are warm! Perhaps the sun is one of his eyes. Who knows upon what other little thing his other eye may rest? A speck of dust--our hills, our mountains. Think of what all our wisdom means, what our time and space are to him, the earth and the oceans and the waters all perhaps so small that he, too, needs some powerful glass to see us! And there may yet be still other beings standing in the same relation to him as he to us----” When Murdo was in one of his reflective moods he was better left undisturbed. But the following day he continued the conversation. “And if this be so--and I am almost certain it is so--then we are so small that one’s life is not worthy of the slightest consideration. It is the good of the whole tribe one must think of; and if I, Murdo, will soon be too old to rule--for man should rule only when he is able to enforce his commands--should I not beforehand choose a man fit to follow me? What matters it which ant is alive just so that the ant-hill lives? So I shall choose a chief in my own manner. One in whom they shall have absolute confidence; for the wisdom and the power of a ruler are in the belief of his people. And I shall choose the best one in my own manner. And I shall choose him while I am yet able to do so, before old age has dimmed my mind and while I am yet ruler. But one thing I want of thee. Never a word to the others of what thou hast told me! Never a word of what we have seen through those glasses! Never speak of our stay at your doctor’s! A witch has cured me! And never question when I ask thee to do something! Just do it!”