"'But Othere, the old sea captain,
He neither paused nor stirred
Till the king listened, and then
Once more took up his pen
And wrote down every word,

"'And to the King of the Saxons
In witness of the truth,
Raising his noble head,
He stretched his brown hand and said,
"Behold this walrus tooth."'

By Jove, what chaps those must have been, to go sailing all over the shop
never knowing where they'd fetch the land! Hah!"

"Charlie," I pleaded, "if you'll only be sensible for a minute or two I'll
make our hero in our tale every inch as good as Othere."

"Umph! Longfellow wrote that poem. I don't care about writing things any
more. I want to read." He was thoroughly out of tune now, and raging over
my own ill-luck, I left him.

Conceive yourself at the door of the world's treasure-house guarded by a
child--an idle irresponsible child playing knuckle-bones--on whose favor
depends the gift of the key, and you will imagine one half my torment.
Till that evening Charlie had spoken nothing that might not lie within the
experiences of a Greek galley-slave. But now, or there was no virtue in
books, he had talked of some desperate adventure of the Vikings, of
Thorfin Karlsefne's sailing to Wineland, which is America, in the ninth or
tenth century. The battle in the harbor he had seen; and his own death he