have only one book,' said Oscar; and then he told what a wonderful
book it was; how it could only be opened by repeating certain mystic
words, and how its pages were full of living pictures, representing
things which had been done in the world, and which were being done
now. Kanker burst out laughing.

'I don't believe it,' he said. 'It's an hallucination. There is no
such book, in the first place, and if there were, it couldn't be what
you say it is.'

This made Oscar angry. 'There is such a book,' said he, 'and if you
don't believe it I can show it to you.'

Kanker went on laughing and wagging his great hands up and down. 'Oh!
show it to me--show it to me!' he spluttered. 'Let me touch it with my
fingers, and then perhaps I'll believe.'

'Come into the house, then, and you shall touch it!' exclaimed Oscar.
He sprang up and went into the house, and Kanker followed him readily
enough. 'Let me put my fingers on it--that's all I ask,' he kept
repeating. 'Let me touch it.'

'There!' said Oscar, 'there it is on that shelf. Do you believe now?'

Kanker took the book down from the shelf, and felt it all over. 'I
believe that this is something that feels like a book,' he said at
last. 'But I don't believe it is a book until I see it opened; and
then I shan't believe it has the pictures you talk about unless I see
them, and can put my finger on them; and I don't believe you can open
it.'

'I can open it!' cried Oscar.

'If you can do it, then why don't you?' Kanker replied.

Now Oscar knew that the mystic words which undid the clasp were a
secret which he had no right to disclose. But he wanted so much to
show Kanker the inside of the book, and make him acknowledge that he
was wrong, that everything else seemed of little account in
comparison. He took the book from Kanker's hands. As he did so, a
strange feeling came over him. A voice, that seemed to speak not to
his ears, but within him, bid him pause. Did he care so much for this
Kanker, with his flat face and his great red hands, as to betray the
secret which his mother had confided to him? Oscar hesitated.

'Ha! I knew you were lying!' said Kanker, with his disagreeable laugh.

'You shall see that I am not!' retorted Oscar, becoming angrier than
ever. Then he began to repeat the mystic words. But he found it hard
to pronounce them, and some of them he could scarcely remember. His
teeth chattered as he went on, and his heart beat painfully. But
Kanker was watch