The great silver flake which the comet struck out upon the serene surface lay glinting there among the lesser stellar reflections, when a man, kneeling in a gully of the steep bank sloping to the "salt lick," leaned forward suddenly to gaze at it; then, with a gasp, turned his eyes upward to that flaming blade drawn athwart the peaceful sky. He did not utter a sound. The habit of silence essential to the deer-hunter kept its mechanical hold upon his nerves. Only the hand with which he grasped the half-exposed roots of a great sycamore-tree, denuded in some partial caving of the bank long ago, relaxed and trembled slightly. He was a man of scant and narrow experience, his world the impenetrable mountain wilderness, and, though seemingly the pupil of nature, versed in the ways of beast and bird, the signs of the clouds, the seasons of bourgeoning and burr, it was but of casual external aspects. He knew naught of its wondrous history, its subtler significance, its strange record--the flood-tides registered on that cliff beyond the laurel; the reptilian trail in the ledge beneath the butt of his rifle, the imprint still fast in the solid rock, albeit the species extinct; the great bones of ancient unknown beasts sunk in the depressions of this saline quagmire, which herds of them had once frequented for the salt, as did of late the buffalo, and now the timorous deer, wont to come, like shadows wavering in the wind, to lick the briny earth. The strange, glinting blade overhead had no claim on his recognition as the "comet of Aristotle," or the "evil-disposed comet" personified by the Italians as Sir Great-Lance, _il Signor Astone_, or Halley's comet, or Donati's. Self is the centre of the solar system with many souls, and around this point do all its incidents revolve. For _him_ that wondrous white fire was kindled in the skies, for _him_, in special relation to his small life, to the wish nearest his hot human heart, to the clumsy scheme dear to his slow, crude brain. He thought it a warning then: and later he thought this still.