For many weary weeks he wandered. Weeks ran into months, months became years, and still Umpleton wandered from village to village, from tribe to tribe, trading, keeping his eyes open, and asking questions from the old men. He learned many things from them, and although it was long before the days of books, yet by remembering what he heard and thinking it over he became for the time a young man whose word was worth listening to and whose opinion was worth having. So, one evening he stopped at a chief's hut where he was known, and decided a very knotty question so wisely and justly that they asked him to tarry with them for a while. He answered them in a dreamy way, for his mind was thinking of the Star and his fruitless quest, forgetting that even thus it had brought good fortune, since it had given him knowledge. They asked him how he made his bronze, and he showed them how. Then they in turn showed him certain small, very heavy black stones, which they used to make hot in the fire, and by placing in their pots would make the water in them boil furiously without danger of breaking the pot, as the fire was apt to do. As he looked at them it seemed to him that they were not unlike his Star-club, and, liking to try things, he raked a hot one out of the fire and began to hammer it with his club. He found he could hammer it like copper as long as it was hot, and he knew he had made a great find! While the chief looked on in amazement, he found that by heating one he could flatten it out, then he could make small ones stick to it while hot and hammer all into one mass, then into a bar, and from that he could make an axe-head with an edge which would cut clean through a copper ring as though it was but cheese; next, when he was in a hurry to cool it off, and for that reason put it into water, he found that the metal became so hard that he had no tool which could scratch it, no bronze which it would not cut sheer through; and in all the Forestland no chief was so happy as the headman of that village! Axes that would cut wood as never axe cut before! Weapons which would not break nor grow blunt at the first blow! What treasures! Every fragment of those heavy stones was brought to Umpleton. They dug deep into the hillside for them. They made so many tools that although both stone, copper and bronze ones were still in use yet they were used only by those who could not afford the better ones. And in some such way began what we now call the Iron Age; and at last, one joyous day, two young boys found a mass of metal so heavy that they could not lift it; and by the carvings on it Umpleton found that it was indeed the treasure of his family for which he had searched so long, and the search for which had been the cause of his present fortune. Once more the Iron Star was in the hut of the son of a Cave Man. SPARK IV. HOW THE STAR WENT TO THE NORTHLAND.