re brought up on a newer and more scientific catechism,
beginning:

_Teacher:_ Who made you?

_Answer:_ My father and mother.

And among themselves they were encouraged to raise up questions and
bring them to their elders for simple and instructive answers. And the
punishment for lying to children and frightening them with mysteries was
very terrible.

Upon his second long excursion the Poor Boy and his jolly companions
(except Wangog, who was taciturn) came to the end of the Poor Boy's
lands, a coast of granite sheathed with ice, and beyond, great broken
cakes of ice heaving slowly with groans and grinding roars upon the
tranquil winter ocean.

Back of the granite barriers the river spread right and left, and then
went out to sea in a deep and narrow stream, curiously free from ice.
Indeed, there was but little ice in the main basin, and a kind of steam
hung over it so that the Poor Boy was compelled and delighted to
conclude (with the aid of his companions) that the river toward its
mouth must be swollen by warm springs.

"I wonder if ships couldn't come in all the year round?"

He was going to wonder about other things, when the taciturn Wangog
grunted and pointed to where the smoke of a steamer lay black along the
horizon, and after that, to them closely watching, little by little her
black hull rose from the grays and whites and greens of the ice.

She proved to be many kinds of a ship, in rapid succession, but last of
all she was a yacht, huge and black and glittering with much brass. She
was owned by a great statesman, who, with nothing but his country's
welfare at heart, had been accused of high treason, and who, having
heard of the Poor Boy's asylum for unfortunates, was making for it as
fast as he could.

She came slowly between the headlands and to anchor at last with a
splendid splash that glittered in the sun like diamonds....

It was very disappointing. If the Poor Boy, searching a more than
half-emptied knapsack, was ever to get home to his own house he must
postpone his visit to--Lord Harrow's (yes, that was the name forever and
ever) yacht. Why had the Poor Boy and his companions wasted so much time
over an empty harbor, when they might just as well have had the yacht
arrive in the early morning, giving time for visits, explanations, and
lunch?

The Poor Boy began to stamp his feet. There was no sensation in them,
and he found that they were frozen. He had come too far, he had exposed
him