is verdant locks, his golden flowing hair, had, with a damnable
and insinuating deception, made him a present of a pot of pomatum. How,
applying it in the evening, on rising in the morning he found his pillow
strewn with the golden locks, and, looking into the glass, beheld
the shining and smooth expanse which henceforth he must bear. The few
remaining hairs were turned to a silvery whiteness, and the young lady
married his rival.

"And," said Tant Sannie solemnly, "if it had not been for the grace of
God, and reading of the psalms, he says he would have killed himself. He
says he could kill himself quite easily if he wants to marry a woman and
she won't."

"Alle wereld!" said Trana: and then they went to sleep.

Every one was lost in sleep soon; but from the window of the cabin the
light streamed forth. It came from a dung fire, over which Waldo sat
brooding. Hour after hour he sat there, now and again throwing a fresh
lump of fuel on to the fire, which burnt up bravely, and then sank into
a great bed of red coals, which reflected themselves in the boy's eyes
as he sat there brooding, brooding, brooding. At last, when the fire was
blazing at its brightest, he rose suddenly and walked slowly to a beam
from which an ox riem hung. Loosening it, he ran a noose in one end and
then doubled it round his arm.

"Mine, mine! I have a right," he muttered; and then something louder,
"if I fall and am killed, so much the better!"

He opened the door and went out into the starlight.

He walked with his eyes bent upon the ground, but overhead it was one of
those brilliant southern nights when every space so small that your hand
might cover it shows fifty cold white points, and the Milky-Way is a
belt of sharp frosted silver. He passed the door where Bonaparte lay
dreaming of Trana and her wealth, and he mounted the ladder steps. From
those he clambered with some difficulty on to the roof of the house. It
was of old rotten thatch with a ridge of white plaster, and it crumbled
away under his feet at every step. He trod as heavily as he could. So
much the better if he fell.

He knelt down when he got to the far gable, and began to fasten his riem
to the crumbling bricks. Below was the little window of the loft. With
one end of the riem tied round the gable, the other end round his waist,
how easy to slide down to it, and to open it, through one of the broken
panes, and to go in, and to fill his arms with books, and to clamber up