ell, where he would be handy.

"Far away?" said Satan. "To me no place is far away; distance does not
exist for me. The sun is less than a hundred million miles from here,
and the light that is falling upon us has taken eight minutes to come;
but I can make that flight, or any other, in a fraction of time so
minute that it cannot be measured by a watch. I have but to think the
journey, and it is accomplished."

I held out my hand and said, "The light lies upon it; think it into a
glass of wine, Satan."

He did it. I drank the wine.

"Break the glass," he said.

I broke it.

"There--you see it is real. The villagers thought the brass balls were
magic stuff and as perishable as smoke. They were afraid to touch them.
You are a curious lot--your race. But come along; I have business. I
will put you to bed." Said and done. Then he was gone; but his voice
came back to me through the rain and darkness saying, "Yes, tell Seppi,
but no other."

It was the answer to my thought.

Chapter 8

Sleep would not come. It was not because I was proud of my travels and
excited about having been around the big world to China, and feeling
contemptuous of Bartel Sperling, "the traveler," as he called himself,
and looked down upon us others because he had been to Vienna once and
was the only Eseldorf boy who had made such a journey and seen the
world's wonders. At another time that would have kept me awake, but it
did not affect me now. No, my mind was filled with Nikolaus, my thoughts
ran upon him only, and the good days we had seen together at romps and
frolics in the woods and the fields and the river in the long summer
days, and skating and sliding in the winter when our parents thought
we were in school. And now he was going out of this young life, and the
summers and winters would come and go, and we others would rove and play
as before, but his place would be vacant; we should see him no more.
To-morrow he would not suspect, but would be as he had always been,
and it would shock me to hear him laugh, and see him do lightsome and
frivolous things, for to me he would be a corpse, with waxen hands and
dull eyes, and I should see the shroud around his face; and next day he
would not suspect, nor the next, and all the time his handful of days
would be wasting swiftly away and that awful thing coming nearer and
nearer, his fate closing steadily around him and no one knowing it but
Seppi and me. Twelve days--only twelve days. It