“Ah, I see!  You want to stare out of that southeast window again.  Now, I think the sight is handsomer to the west, where you can see the lights of Jersey City and Hoboken, and on the ferry boats and the shipping anchored in North River.  But that’s a matter o’ taste.  Well, look out o’ the window, if you want to.  I guess I can trust you for fires in that quarter.”

“That you may!” answered Bog, throwing open the southeast window.

The stars above twinkled crisply in the frosty air; and the sky, with its low horizon on every side, seemed infinitely vaster than it did to Bog in the narrow and high-walled streets of the city.  But Bog, though he used to puzzle over the wonders of the heavens when he was a few years younger, and had picked up a little something of astronomy from his uncle Ith (who knew something of that as of many other sciences), did not turn his gaze to them.  Nor did he give more than a sweeping glance at the dotted line of lights below, stretching out in long perspectives, until the two luminous points at the end seemed blended into one.  There were several parks in sight, which looked like portions of the sky let down on the earth, in all but the mathematical regularity of their mock stars.  But Bog’s eyes passed them by.  To an inquisitive mind, there was something of interest to be seen and speculated over, in the lighted windows of houses all about him.  People could be seen eating their late suppers, rocking by the fire, playing the piano, dancing, taking a rubber at whist or euchre, or diverting themselves with other recreations of winter house life.  In one upper chamber, a physician was presenting a child just born to the proud father.  In another, there was a mysterious spectacle, which a closer examination might have proved to be the preparing of a dead body for the morrow’s burial.  But Bog saw none of these sights.

His eyes sought for, and found immediately, as if by instinct, one light, which, in his opinion, was the only one worth looking at on earth or sky.  It was a single bright gas jet, burning very close to a window about six hundred feet distant from him in an air line.  Several tall chimneys of intervening houses rose almost between him and this light, and, perhaps, their dark, spectral shapes aided him in identifying it so readily.  The lower sash of the window through which the light shone was curtained, but the upper part was uncovered; and an observer on the tower, being fifty or sixty feet above the top of the curtain, could easily look into the room.  Bog rubbed his eyes, into which the cold but not biting wind had brought the tears, and gazed anxiously into Mr. Minford’s apartment.

The pale inventor stood a few feet from the window, attentively examining a mass of machinery before him, upon which the light shone strongly.  Only the tops of the wheels and of the more complex parts were visible; but there was one lever, or bar, connected with it, which rose above the whole, and could be seen by Bog to the extent of at least two feet.  This was an addition to the strange machine as Bog had last seen it, and he contemplated it with fearful interest.