looked
up longingly, but no one appeared. Then Bonaparte looked up also, and
began to call; but there was no answer. What could the boy be doing? The
loft was an unknown land to Bonaparte. He had often wondered what was
up there; he liked to know what was in all locked-up places and
out-of-the-way corners, but he was afraid to climb the ladder. So
Bonaparte looked up, and in the name of all that was tantalizing,
questioned what the boy did up there. The loft was used only as a
lumber-room. What could the fellow find up there to keep him so long?

Could the Boer-woman have beheld Waldo at that instant, any lingering
doubt which might have remained in her mind as to the boy's insanity
would instantly have vanished. For, having filled the salt-pot, he
proceeded to look for the box of books among the rubbish that filled the
loft. Under a pile of sacks he found it--a rough packing-case, nailed
up, but with one loose plank. He lifted that, and saw the even backs of
a row of books. He knelt down before the box, and ran his hand along its
rough edges, as if to assure himself of its existence. He stuck his hand
in among the books, and pulled out two. He felt them, thrust his fingers
in among the leaves, and crumpled them a little, as a lover feels the
hair of his mistress. The fellow gloated over his treasure. He had had
a dozen books in the course of his life; now here was a mine of them
opened at his feet. After a while he began to read the titles, and now
and again opened a book and read a sentence; but he was too excited to
catch the meanings distinctly. At last he came to a dull, brown volume.
He read the name, opened it in the centre, and where he opened began
to read. It was a chapter on property that he fell upon--Communism,
Fourierism, St. Simonism, in a work on Political Economy. He read down
one page and turned over to the next; he read down that without changing
his posture by an inch; he read the next, and the next, kneeling up all
the while with the book in his hand, and his lips parted.

All he read he did not fully understand; the thoughts were new to him;
but this was the fellow's startled joy in the book--the thoughts were
his, they belonged to him. He had never thought them before, but they
were his.

He laughed silently and internally, with the still intensity of
triumphant joy.

So, then, all thinking creatures did not send up the one cry--"As thou,
dear Lord, has created things in the beginning, so are