urse, now and then, and sometimes he could not prevent
himself from learning something, but he never did it on purpose.

"It is such waste of time," said he. "They only know what everybody
knows. I want to find out new things that nobody has thought of but me."

"I don't think you're likely to find out anything that none of the wise
men in the whole world have thought of all these thousands of years,"
said Granny.

But Edmund did not agree with her. He played truant whenever he could,
for he was a kindhearted boy, and could not bear to think of a master's
time and labor being thrown away on a boy like himself--who did not wish
to learn, only to find out--when there were so many worthy lads
thirsting for instruction in geography and history and reading and
ciphering, and Mr. Smiles's "Self-Help."

Other boys played truant too, of course--and these went nutting or
blackberrying or wild plum gathering, but Edmund never went on the side
of the town where the green woods and hedges grew. He always went up the
mountain where the great rocks were, and the tall, dark pine trees, and
where other people were afraid to go because of the strange noises that
came out of the caves.

Edmund was not afraid of these noises--though they were very strange and
terrible. He wanted to find out what made them.

One day he did. He had invented, all by himself, a very ingenious and
new kind of lantern, made with a turnip and a tumbler, and when he took
the candle out of Granny's bedroom candlestick to put in it, it gave
quite a splendid light.

He had to go to school next day, and he was caned for being absent
without leave--although he very straightforwardly explained that he had
been too busy making the lantern to have time to come to school.

But the day after he got up very early and took the lunch Granny had
ready for him to take to school--two boiled eggs and an apple
turnover--and he took his lantern and went off as straight as a dart to
the mountains to explore the caves.

The caves were very dark, but his lantern lighted them up beautifully;
and they were most interesting caves, with stalactites and stalagmites
and fossils, and all the things you read about in the instructive books
for the young. But Edmund did not care for any of these things just
then. He wanted to find out what made the noises that people were afraid
of, and there was nothing in the caves to tell him.

Presently he sat down in the biggest cave and listene