ing him askance with his pale spectacled eyes, and
Oscar would not stop. At last he had spoken all the words; the clasp
flew back; the book opened!

'There!' said Oscar, thrusting it into Kanker's hands. 'It is open:
now look for yourself!' Then he turned away, and hid his face in his
hands.

All of a sudden he heard again Kanker's hateful spluttering laugh. He
looked up in astonishment. Kanker was pointing contemptuously to the
page.

'No pictures here!' he was saying. 'Show me your pictures! There's
nothing but printing here, and very stupid commonplace printing too!'

Oscar fixed his eyes upon the book; but they were darkened, and at
first he could see nothing. At length his sight cleared; but, alas! it
was as Kanker had said: there were no pictures in the book, no beauty,
no life, and no mystery. It was just like any other book--ordinary
pages printed with ordinary print. There had been some terrible loss,
but whether the loss were in Oscar or in the book, Oscar could not
tell. He stood there unable to speak, and almost to think.

'It is just as I knew it was,' said Kanker, throwing down the book.
'Another of your absurd hallucinations. You dream about things until
you think they are real. You had much better do as I do--wear
spectacles, make up your mind that everything is a lie, and trust to
your fingers. By doing that you might, in the course of time, come to
know something. Look here, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make an
exchange with you. It isn't a fair exchange, for what I give you is
worth a great deal, and what you give me is worth nothing. You give me
your book, and I'll give you mine.'

'What is your book?' Oscar asked.

'An arithmetic, to be sure!' replied Kanker, pulling it out of his
pocket. 'See, here is the multiplication table. And here are addition,
subtraction, multiplication, and division. And here are vulgar
fractions. And here are examples. And here is the Rule of Three.
That's what I call a book worth having.'

'But if you think my book is not worth having, why do you want it?'

'To make a fire to warm myself with,' Kanker replied.

'If you are cold, will not the sun warm you?' asked Oscar.

'No one has been able to prove that there is any warmth in the sun,'
said Kanker. 'It only seems to be warm. But I know that a fire is
warm, because I can burn my fingers in it.'

'But if the sun feels warm, is not that as good as if it were really
warm?'

'For you it may be,' answered