Umpl had his own work. Outside, hare-catching kept him busy. It is wonderful how many a family can eat when it tries hard, and when deer are scarce, or the father is a long way off on a hunt and there is no meat in the kitchen. Then he had to dig up certain juicy roots that were good--when he could find them. A great part of his time also was spent in breaking bones and stones into small pieces for his father to work up into arrowheads. Umpl hated that. He would not have minded doing the fine work about it, but just to crack bones all his spare time was not joyful; and, now that there was no fire to pull wood for, he had just so much more spare time for bone-cracking. One afternoon both Umpl and Sptz went out together. It was not very late, and on so clear a day one could see a long way through the glades among the tree trunks, which was something to be considered. Once when it was not so clear they had spent a long time on the outer branches of a tree waiting for a Cave Bear to get hungry enough to give them up and hunt for another dinner. But this was a better day. They knew of a log in the forest, that was all covered with vines, and this was the time of the year when also it would be covered with berries that were worth having. They gave a careful look around before sitting down, marked a tree that looked like easy climbing, and then went for the berries; but they still sat facing different ways, so that any danger which might come from any side could be seen in time for flight. Overhead they had not thought of looking. And yet it was from overhead that danger was coming. Far up in the sky a star was falling. Why it fell no one knows; but fall it did. It came hurtling out of space, like a great fiery dragon, leaving a long flaming train across the sky that lit up the whole world like a torch. The birds in the forest fluttered and screamed in fear. The wild beasts crouched under the largest trees that were near. It looked as though the whole world was on fire! Many miles upward, if one goes so high, he comes to a place where there is no air. As you come nearer the earth you begin to find some, although very thin indeed. Then it grows thicker, till there is enough for one to breathe and live in. But the air is wrapped around the earth like a cushion, or like a peach around its stone; and you know that even a cushion, or a football, or a bicycle tire can be blown up with air so hard that it seems like a rock and would hurt if you struck it. The star struck this cushion. It was flying so fast-- hundreds of miles a second, or in the time between two ticks of a clock--that the air which it met did not have time to be pushed out of its way, and it was like running up against a hard wall. There was an enormous crash like thunder, but ten thousand thousand times as loud, and that star broke all up into pieces.