"Did you have many books and magazines?" he asked innocently.

"We had three books!" she answered proudly, as if that were a great many.
"One was a grammar. Father bought it for mother before they were married,
and she always kept it wrapped up in paper carefully. She used to get it
out for me to read in sometimes; but she was very careful with it, and
when she died I put it in her hands. I thought she would like to have it
close to her, because it always seemed so much to her. You see father
bought it. Then there was an almanac, and a book about stones and earth. A
man who was hunting for gold left that. He stopped over night at our
house, and asked for some, thing to eat. He hadn't any money to pay for
it; so he left that book with us, and said when he found the gold he would
come and buy it back again. But he never came back."

"Is that all that you have ever read?" he asked compassionately.

"O, no! We got papers sometimes. Father would come home with a whole paper
wrapped around some bundle. Once there was a beautiful story about a girl;
but the paper was torn in the middle, and I never knew how it came out."

There was great wistfulness in her voice. It seemed to be one of the
regrets of her girlhood that she did not know how that other girl in the
story fared. All at once she turned to him.

"Now tell me about your life," she said. "I'm sure you have a great deal
to tell."

His face darkened in a way that made her sorry.

"O, well," said he as if it mattered very little about his life, "I had a