?"

"I'm sure they could," said Bonaparte; "and if not, why I'll do my best
for you. I'll send it to England. It must be done somehow. How long have
you worked at it?"

"Nine months," said the boy.

"Oh, it is such a nice little machine," said Bonaparte, "one can't help
feeling an interest in it. There is only one little improvement, one
very little improvement, I should like to make."

Bonaparte put his foot on the machine and crushed it into the sand. The
boy looked up into his face.

"Looks better now," said Bonaparte, "doesn't it? If we can't have it
made in England we'll send it to America. Good-bye; ta-ta," he added.
"You're a great genius, a born genius, my dear boy, there's no doubt
about it."

He mounted the grey mare and rode off. The dog watched his retreat with
cynical satisfaction; but his master lay on the ground with his head on
his arms in the sand, and the little wheels and chips of wood lay on
the ground around him. The dog jumped on to his back and snapped at the
black curls, till, finding that no notice was taken, he walked off to
play with a black beetle. The beetle was hard at work trying to roll
home a great ball of dung it had been collecting all the morning: but
Doss broke the ball, and ate the beetle's hind legs, and then bit off
its head. And it was all play, and no one could tell what it had lived
and worked for. A striving, and a striving, and an ending in nothing.

Chapter 1.XI. He Snaps.

"I have found something in the loft," said Em to Waldo, who was
listlessly piling cakes of fuel on the kraal wall, a week after. "It is
a box of books that belonged to my father. We thought Tant Sannie had
burnt them."

The boy put down the cake he was raising and looked at her.

"I don't think they are very nice, not stories," she added, "but you can
go and take any you like."

So saying, she took up the plate in which she had brought his breakfast,
and walked off to the house.

After that the boy worked quickly. The pile of fuel Bonaparte had
ordered him to pack was on the wall in half an hour. He then went to
throw salt on the skins laid out to dry. Finding the pot empty, he went
to the loft to refill it.

Bonaparte Blenkins, whose door opened at the foot of the ladder, saw the
boy go up, and stood in the doorway waiting for his return. He wanted
his boots blacked. Doss, finding he could not follow his master up the
round bars, sat patiently at the foot of the ladder. Presently he