again! They had burnt one book--he would have twenty. Every man's hand
was against his--his should be against every man's. No one would help
him--he would help himself.

He lifted the black damp hair from his knit forehead, and looked round
to cool his hot face. Then he saw what a regal night it was. He knelt
silently and looked up. A thousand eyes were looking down at him, bright
and so cold. There was a laughing irony in them.

"So hot, so bitter, so angry? Poor little mortal?"

He was ashamed. He folded his arms, and sat on the ridge of the roof
looking up at them.

"So hot, so bitter, so angry?"

It was as though a cold hand had been laid upon his throbbing forehead,
and slowly they began to fade and grow dim. Tant Sannie and the burnt
book, Bonaparte and the broken machine, the box in the loft, he himself
sitting there--how small they all became! Even the grave over yonder.
Those stars that shone on up above so quietly, they had seen a thousand
such little existences fight just so fiercely, flare up just so brightly
and go out; and they, the old, old stars, shone on forever.

"So hot, so angry, poor little soul?" they said.

The riem slipped from his fingers; he sat with his arms folded, looking
up.

"We," said the stars, "have seen the earth when it was young. We have
seen small things creep out upon its surface--small things that prayed
and loved and cried very loudly, and then crept under it again. But we,"
said the stars, "are as old as the Unknown."

He leaned his chin against the palm of his hand and looked up at them.
So long he sat there that bright stars set and new ones rose, and yet he
sat on.

Then at last he stood up, and began to loosen the riem from the gable.

What did it matter about the books? The lust and the desire for them had
died out. If they pleased to keep them from him they might. What matter?
it was a very little thing. Why hate, and struggle, and fight? Let it be
as it would.

He twisted the riem round his arm and walked back along the ridge of the
house.

By this time Bonaparte Blenkins had finished his dream of Trana, and as
he turned himself round for a fresh doze he heard the steps descending
the ladder. His first impulse was to draw the blanket over his head and
his legs under him, and to shout; but recollecting that the door was
locked and the window carefully bolted, he allowed his head slowly to
crop out among the blankets, and listened intently. Whosoever it mig