of a surprise on his countenance.

"I have heard Mr. Armstrong talk about the stars before, although never
so much as he did that night, and then I've watched them a good bit,
and noticed the way they go. As for the planets, they are not so easy,
but I think I have got hold of it all."

Miriam looked out of window when she went to bed, and felt a new
pleasure. The firmament, instead of being a mere muddle--beautiful,
indeed, she had always thought it--had a plan in it. She marked where
one particularly bright star was showing itself in the south-east--it
was Sirius; and in the night she rose softly, drew aside the blind, saw
him again due south, and recognised the similarity of the arc with that
which her husband had constructed with his withies and wire. She lay
down again, thinking, as she went off to sleep, that still that silent,
eternal march went on. At four she again awoke from light slumber, and
crept to the blind again. Another portion of the same arc had been
traversed, and Sirius with his jewelled flashes was beginning to
descend. She thought she should like to see him actually sink, and she
waited and waited till he had disappeared, till the first tint of dawn
was discernible in the east, and that almost indistinguishable murmur
was heard which precedes the day. She then once more lay down, and
when she rose, she was richer by a very simple conception, but still
richer. She felt as a novice might feel who had been initiated, and
had been intrusted at least with the preliminary secrets of her
community. She owed her initiation to Mr. Armstrong, but also to her
husband. Experts no doubt may smile, and so may the young people who,
in these days of universal knowledge, have got up astronomy for
examinations, but nevertheless, in the profounder study of the science
there is perhaps no pleasure so sweet and so awful as that which
arises, not when books are read about it, but when the heavens are
first actually watched, when the movement of the Bear is first actually
seen for ourselves, and with the morning Arcturus is discerned
punctually over the eastern horizon; when the advance of the stars
westwards through the year, marking the path of the earth in its orbit,
is noted, and the moon's path also becomes intelligible.

Mr. Armstrong had long desired to make an orrery for the purpose of
instructing a few children and friends, but had never done anything
towards it, partly for lack of time, and partly