interest. Also, there
was a pleasant change; many people called at the house to congratulate
him, and a number of cool old friends became kind and friendly again;
and, to top all, Marget was invited to a party.

And there was no mystery; Father Peter told the whole circumstance just
as it happened, and said he could not account for it, only it was the
plain hand of Providence, so far as he could see.

One or two shook their heads and said privately it looked more like
the hand of Satan; and really that seemed a surprisingly good guess for
ignorant people like that. Some came slyly buzzing around and tried
to coax us boys to come out and "tell the truth;" and promised they
wouldn't ever tell, but only wanted to know for their own satisfaction,
because the whole thing was so curious. They even wanted to buy the
secret, and pay money for it; and if we could have invented something
that would answer--but we couldn't; we hadn't the ingenuity, so we had
to let the chance go by, and it was a pity.

We carried that secret around without any trouble, but the other one,
the big one, the splendid one, burned the very vitals of us, it was so
hot to get out and we so hot to let it out and astonish people with
it. But we had to keep it in; in fact, it kept itself in. Satan said
it would, and it did. We went off every day and got to ourselves in the
woods so that we could talk about Satan, and really that was the only
subject we thought of or cared anything about; and day and night we
watched for him and hoped he would come, and we got more and more
impatient all the time. We hadn't any interest in the other boys any
more, and wouldn't take part in their games and enterprises. They seemed
so tame, after Satan; and their doings so trifling and commonplace after
his adventures in antiquity and the constellations, and his miracles and
meltings and explosions, and all that.

During the first day we were in a state of anxiety on account of one
thing, and we kept going to Father Peter's house on one pretext or
another to keep track of it. That was the gold coin; we were afraid
it would crumble and turn to dust, like fairy money. If it did--But it
didn't. At the end of the day no complaint had been made about it, so
after that we were satisfied that it was real gold, and dropped the
anxiety out of our minds.

There was a question which we wanted to ask Father Peter, and finally
we went there the second evening, a little diffidently, af