door popped open in it.

Faintly, this incident recalled a dream to the child. A dream which with superior stubbornness he had refused to record in his Freud Book this morning. The dream-thought was in his mind at the exact instant that the star-door popped wide and some 'thing' emerged.

Some 'thing'.

Young eyes, seeing an object for the first time, have to make a familiar thing of it. Roby didn't know what this 'thing' was stepping from the sphere. So, scowling, Roby thought of what it most resembled.

Instantly the 'something' became a certain thing.

Warm air ran cold. Light flickered, form changed, melted, shifted as the thing evolved into certainty!

Startled, a tall thin pale man stood beside the metal star.

The man had pink, terrified eyes. He trembled.

"Oh, I know you." Roby was disappointed. "You're only the Sandman."

"Sand—man?"

The stranger quivered like heat rising from boiling metal. His shaking hands went wildly up to touch his long coppery hair as if he'd never seen or felt it before. The Sandman gazed in horror at his own hands, legs, feet, body, as if they were all new. "Sand—man?" The word was difficult. Talking was new to him, also. He seemed about to flee, but something stopped him.

"Yeah," said Roby. "I dream about you every night. Oh, I know what you think. Semantically, our teachers say that ghosts, goblins and fairies and sandmen are labels, only names for which there aren't any actual referents, no actual objects or things. But to heck with that. We kids know more than teachers about it. You being here proves the teachers wrong. There are Sandmen after all, aren't there?"

"Don't give me a label!" cried the Sandman, suddenly. He seemed to understand now. For some reason he was unutterably frightened. He kept pinching, tugging and feeling his own long new body as if it was a thing of terror. "Don't name me, don't label me!"

"Huh?"

"I'm a referent!" screamed the Sandman. "I'm not a label! I'm just a referent! Let me go!"

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