All he read he did not fully understand; the thoughts were new to him; but this was the fellow’s startled joy in the book — the thoughts were his, they belonged to him. He had never thought them before, but they were his.

He laughed silently and internally, with the still intensity of triumphant joy.

So, then, all thinking creatures did not send up the one cry — “As thou, dear Lord, hast created things in the beginning, so are they now, so ought they to be, so will they be, world without end; and it doesn’t concern us what they are. Amen.” There were men to whom not only kopjes and stones were calling out imperatively, “What are we, and how came we here; Understand us, and know us;” but to whom even the old, old relations between man and man, and the customs of the ages called, and could not be made still and forgotten.

The boy’s heavy body quivered with excitement. So he was not alone, not alone. He could not quite have told any one why he was so glad, and this warmth had come to him. His cheeks were burning. No wonder that Bonaparte called in vain, and Doss put his paws on the ladder, and whined till three-quarters of an hour had passed. At last the boy put the book in his breast and buttoned it tightly to him. He took up the salt-pot, and went to the top of the ladder. Bonaparte, with his hands folded under his coat-tails, looked up when he appeared, and accosted him.

“You’ve been rather a long time up there, my lad,” he said, as the boy descended with a tremulous haste, most unlike his ordinary slow movements. “You didn’t hear me calling, I suppose?”

Bonaparte whisked the tails of his coat up and down as he looked at him. He, Bonaparte Blenkins, had eyes which were very far-seeing. He looked at the pot. It was rather a small pot to have taken three-quarters of an hour in the filling. He looked at the face. It was flushed. And yet Tant’ Sannie kept no wine — he had not been drinking; his eyes were wide open and bright — he had not been sleeping; there was no girl up there — he had not been making love. Bonaparte looked at him sagaciously. What would account for the marvellous change in the boy coming down the ladder from the boy going up the ladder? One thing there was. Did not Tant’ Sannie keep in the loft “bultongs,” and nice smoked sausages? There must be something nice to eat up there! Aha! that was it!

Bonaparte was so interested in carrying out this chain of inductive reasoning that he quite forgot to have his boots blacked.

He watched the boy shuffle off with the salt-pot under his arm; then he stood in his doorway, and raised his eyes to the quiet blue sky, and audibly propounded this riddle to himself.