"Fiction!"

"A story, like Grimm's tales."

"Oh!" His jaw dropped and he stared at me. "What a pity!"

I had wanted to stir in him a knowledge of evil and chose the
picturesque as being the least unpleasant. But he couldn't believe
that old John Silver and the Squire and Benn Gunn hadn't been real
people. The tale dwelt in his mind for days, but the final defeat of
the mutineers seemed to satisfy him as to the intention of the
narrative.

"If there are evil men in the world like those mutineers, Mr. Canby,
it must be a pretty bad place to live in," was the final comment, and
I made no effort to undeceive him.




CHAPTER III

JERRY GROWS


It is not my intention to dwell too long upon the first stages of my
tutorship, which presented few difficulties not easily surmounted, but
it is necessary in order to understand Jerry's character that I set
down a few facts which show certain phases of his development. Of his