hot through his heart.

Those two little volumes became at once his most priceless possession
and the foundation of his first library. To others they might appear
quite commonplace books, without much value from any point of view. To
him they were passports to a realm of action and freedom and colour,
where he could roam at will in search of everything he missed in real
life. One was bound in white with the picture of an African lion hunt on
the front cover. The other one had a plain brown binding. Both had
coloured illustrations and contained stories of hunting and travelling
adventures in all sorts of out-of-the-way places. There were tales of
lion hunting with Arabs and tiger hunting in the jungles of India, of
whaling in the Arctic and hair-breadth escapes from giant snakes in
South America, of cruises in southern seas and caravaning across the
high plateaus of Central Asia.

One story in particular stuck in his mind, and more particularly one
little detail out of that story. It was one of comparative repose and
few sensational incidents relating the perfectly peaceful, but
nevertheless strange and interesting experiences of a European traveller
through some desert region back of the Caspian Sea. Arriving at a nomad
camp far away from all civilization, this traveller was met with
touching hospitality. During a formal visit to the chieftain of the
tribe, he was offered tea. With the tea was handed him a bowl containing
a single lump of sugar. In European fashion he picked up this and
dropped it into his cup. Not a word was said, but something told him
that he had committed some dreadful mistake. By and by, as he watched
the others, he understood. Sugar was so rare that to use it in ordinary
fashion was out of question, and so the solitary lump served was meant
to be licked in turn by each, and he, as the guest of honour, had been
given the first chance. To Keith's mind that story seemed as clearly
realized as if he had played a part in it himself. And what occupied him
more than anything else was the pitiful existence of those poor nomads
to whom even such a common thing as sugar was an almost unattainable
luxury. It was his first lesson in human sympathy, and it was typical of
his own existence and bent that it should have come out of a book.

XIV

From that day one of his main objects in life was to acquire books. He
had little pride as a rule, in spite of all his sensitiveness, and when
books were concerne