'And these people whom you caught,' whispered Rogers from his corner,
listening to a tale he knew as well as she did, 'you kept them
prisoners?'
'I first put into them all the things I longed to do myself in the big
world, and then flung them back again into their homes and towns and
villages---'
'Excepting one,' he murmured.
'Who was so big and clumsy that he broke the meshes and so never got
away.' She laughed, while the children stared at their cousin,
wondering how he knew as much as she did. 'He stayed with me, and
showed me how to make our prisoners useful afterwards by painting them
all over with starlight which we collected in a cave. Then they went
back and dazzled others everywhere by their strange, alluring
brilliance. We made the whole world over in this way---'
'Until you lost him.'
'One cloudy night he disappeared, yes, and I never found him again.
There was a big gap between the Pleiades and Orion where he had
tumbled through. I named him Orion after that; and I would stand at
night beneath the four great pine trees and call and call, but in
vain. "You must come up to me! You must come up to me!" I called, but
got no answer---'
'Though you knew quite well where he had fallen to, and that he was
only hiding---'
'Excuse me, but _how_ did she know?' inquired Jinny abruptly.
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