He went on down to the doctor’s small paradise enclosed by woven wire to keep the deer out, and easily discovered the right flower, a kind of golden iris. Its petals had a thin luxuriance that suggested wither, as if gold had indeed been persuaded to grow like organic stuff. He brought it home to her, and she called him Midas, and let him place his tribute on the breakfast table. A little later she let him share the fun of baking buckwheat cakes. “But,” said the doctor, “I didn’t know we had any buckwheat.” “Oh, it’s a present from Mr. Gillies. He sent it up by the dog, and he sent back ten dollars that he owes you for potatoes.” And Marvin grinned in the kitchen while he baked griddle cakes as big as a stove cover. Her own versions of beechnut wheat were about as large as the first ring that breaks from a beechnut falling into a pool, but she did not refuse to eat his. Chapter 39. Yttrium After breakfast he made no delay, for he wished to catch that bass. First he took a good look at his island to see where she kept her private ice-box. On the west it was full of fiords, but it struck him that on the east it resembled Resaron, the little Swedish island that has revealed four elements to the world. His tent stood on the Duckling about where the hamlet of Ytterby stands on Resaron, except that no brook led down to the water. Instead of a brook the Duckling supported a line of bushes—blueberries and sweet gale—leading out to the edge of the cliff. A blueberry can extract delicious acid out of silica, and sweet gale can take up the odor of pine needles and change it into that of bay leaves. He remembered how the bushes mantled the rock clean down to the water, and determined to try for bass at that point. He descended to the boat-house and stole a dozen minnows, leaving about twenty-seven grams of silver in the minnow pail. Then he rowed over to Ytterby, selected a great triton of the minnows, and experimented. The cliff was no place to land anything, but as he really expected nothing— He got a bite! Say rather a submarine starting for Finland! His line whizzed away, swung through a quadrant, and started back. He reeled as fast as he could, and with one strong effort swung a five-pound bass clean up over his head. It landed in the bushes, and he had to go in head first after it. Then something happened. The man disappeared, pole and all. He felt the darkness of a cave, the ledge of rock that struck him across the heart, the ice water closing over him. Then he was rising and feeling for the ledge. He found it, crawled up, and fell forward. He bit the air, but his breath refused to come.... Meantime Jean had finished her dishes and assembled the materials for her chowder. She had everything now but the fish, and all she had to do was to go to Pukwudgee and get him. Pukwudgees are Indian fairies, and she had always called her cave by that name, for once it was haunted by the little wild men.