"How do you suppose Columbus felt when his compass didn't
point north any more?" Tip asked.

Otto shook his head. "My father says that there was another
North Star once, and that maybe this one won't last always. I
wonder what would happen to us down here if anything went wrong
with it?"

Arthur chuckled. "I wouldn't worry, Ott. Nothing's apt to
happen to it in your time. Look at the Milky Way! There must be
lots of good dead Indians."

We lay back and looked, meditating, at the dark cover of the
world. The gurgle of the water had become heavier. We had often
noticed a mutinous, complaining note in it at night, quite
different from its cheerful daytime chuckle, and seeming like the
voice of a much deeper and more powerful stream. Our water had
always these two moods: the one of sunny complaisance, the other of
inconsolable, passionate regret.

"Queer how the stars are all in sort of diagrams," remarked
Otto. "You could do most any proposition in geometry with 'em.
They always look as if they meant something. Some folks say
everybody's fortune is all written out in the stars, don't they?"

"They believe so in the old country," Fritz affirmed.

But Arthur only laughed at him. "You're thinking of Napoleon,
Fritzey. He had a star that went out when he began to lose