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 rose I find that life is grim, Without its thorns, why even beauty's dead!" Gud wondered, yet it would not be polite To break the old man's tale of woe. "I'd like to know," the ancient said, "the candle-light-- When we have blown it out where does it go?" "I do not know," said Gud, "do you?" "Ah yes," replied the old man, "I know very well, For I remember as if it were but yesterday how Half dead and famished, the desert in my eyes And hunger written on my lips I stood there like a captain on a hill Dreaming of his broken ships. "I kicked aside a stone that crushed a skull; When from that mouth that mouldered there, There came as if it were the voice of doom, A haunting cry that chilled the air. "Then suddenly I laughed and turned my heel In that dead face; and laughing still I danced along the sands, played hide and seek And chased my shadow up a hill."