hammock was so soft and
cushiony all it did to him was jolt him good.

I looked around but I couldn't find anything to wrap him in. And the
baby didn't have a stitch on him except a sort of spongy paper diaper,
wet as sin. So I finally lifted up the lady, who had a long cape thing
around her, and I took the cape off her real gentle. I knew she was dead
and she wouldn't be needin' it, and that boy baby would catch his death
if I took him out bare-naked like that. She was probably the baby's Ma;
a right pretty woman she was but smashed up something shameful.

So anyhow, to make a long story short, I got that baby boy back across
that Niagary falls somehow, and laid him down by his Pa. The man opened
his eyes kind, and said in a choky voice, "Take care--baby."

I told him I would, and said I'd try to get him up to the house where
Marthy could doctor him. The man told me not to bother. "I dying," he
says. "We come from planet--star up there--crash here--" His voice
trailed off into a language I couldn't understand, and he looked like he
was praying.

I bent over him and held his head on my knees real easy, and I said,
"Don't worry, mister, I'll take care of your little fellow until your
folks come after him. Before God I will."

So the man closed his eyes and I said, _Our Father which art in Heaven_,
and when I got through he was dead.

I got him up on Kate, but he was cruel heavy for all he was such a tall
skinny fellow. Then I wrapped that there baby up in the cape thing and
took him home and give him to Marthy. And the next day I buried the
fellow in the south medder and next meetin' day we had the baby baptized
Matthew Daniel Emmett, and brung him up just like our own kids. That's
all.

_All? Mr. Emmett, didn't you ever find out where that ship really came
from?_

Why, Rev'rend, he said it come from a star. Dying men don't lie, you
know that. I asked the Teacher about them planets he mentioned and she
says that on one of the planets--can't rightly remember the name, March
or Mark or something like that--she says some big scientist feller with
a telescope saw canals on that planet, and they'd hev to be pretty near
as big as this-here Erie canal to see them so far off. And if they could
build canals on that planet I d'no why they couldn't build a flying
machine.

I went back the next day when the water was down a little, to see if I
couldn't get the rest of them folks and bury them, but the flying
machine had