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Stern rigged a tripod for the powerful field-glasses he had rescued froenious addition of a wooden tube and another lens carefully ground out of rock crystal, succeeded in producing (on the right-hand barrel of the binoculars) a telescope of reasonably high power With this, of an evening, he often uring all over many sheets of the birch bark, which he then carefully saved and bound up with leather strings for future reference

In Van's set of encyclopedias he found a fairly large celestial h astronomic data The results of his computations were of vital interest to hi: "Do you know, that wandering black patch in the sky ular orbit of its own? It's a solid body, dark, irregular in outline, and certainly not over five hundred miles above the surface of the earth"

"What can it be, dear?"

"I don't know yet It puzzles me tremendously Now, if it would only appear in the daytiet soht, all it records itself as is just a black,some careful studies In a while I shall probably know its area and mass and density But what it is I cannot say--not yet"

They both pondered a while, absorbed in wonder At last the engineer spoke again

"Beta," said he, "there's another curious fact to note The axis of the earth itself has shifted rees, thirty minutes!"

"It has? Well--what about it?" And she went on with her platting of reed cordage

"You don't seem much concerned about it!"

"I'm not Not in the least It can shift all it wants to, for all of me What hurt does it do? Doesn't it run just as well that way?"

Stern looked at her a ht," he answered "Only I thought the announceht startle you a bit But I see it doesn't So far as practical results go, it accounts for the warmer climate and the decreased inclination to the plane of the ecliptic; or, rather, the decreased--"

"Please, please, don't!" she begged "There's nothing really wrong, is there?"

"Well, that depends on how you define it Probably an astrono I make it that the orbit of the earth has altered its relative length and width by--"