e and nearly black at night,
when the sun is gone. The sky country is really kind of an up-stairs
world, and the stars are small windows, or peep-holes, in the big, blue
floor, for the people up there to look down through when they want to
see what is going on below. Those little windows are always there, day
and night, though you can't see them in the daytime, because then the
sun is shining here and not up there. In the evening, when it quits
shining here, it goes up there, and then, of course, all the star
windows are lit up, just like a window in the Hollow Tree at night. I
will tell you a story of the sky country and its star windows, which
explains everything. It has come down in our family ever since my folks
lived in the moon, which was a great many great-grandfathers back, and
is true, accordingly."

"The moon, where we used to live, is a pretty small world, compared with
the sky world--being about like a pea compared with a bread-bowl--and
our people used to have such big families that if they hadn't found some
place for them to go they would have got so thick that the moon wouldn't
have begun to hold them.

"Well, the moon is pretty close to the sky--not as close as you would
think to look at it, for it seems right against it; it is really about a
mile off--a mile and ten feet, exactly, I believe, or at least that was
the length of my eighty-second great-grandfather's ladder, though, of
course, that had to slant some. My grandparent built that ladder when
our folks got together and decided that we were getting too thick and
something must be done about it. My ancestor said the sky was just the
thing. He had never been there, but he had a beautiful imagination, and
he told them all about the lovely rivers and meadows and fields of
clover they would find there, and said he would invent a way to get
there for all who wanted to go.

[Illustration: TOLD WHAT A GRAND PLACE THE SKY WAS]

"Everybody that heard my ancestor went home and told what a grand place
the sky was, and made it even better than he had said; and some went
around getting other crowds together and telling them about it, and went
on improving the scenery until nobody had ever dreamed before of such a
wonderful place as that sky-country, and it looked as if all the people
in the moon were just waiting to climb Grandpaw's ladder as soon as it
was done.

"It took my ancestor a good while to make it. The first time he got it
done it was too short