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"How can I tell?" he answered "The tradition says nothing of theested Beatrice, "that cah other ways"

"Possibly," Stern assented "Anything es; we lost all thought of history or learning We only fought to live! All was forgotten

"My grandfather taught the English to my father and he to me, and I had no son Nobody here would learn frohed at, and they called my brain softened when I spoke of a place where in the air a light shone half the tireat flame! And in every way they mocked me!

"So I--I"--the old littered in his dis Then I grew blind and could not read the book No longer could I refresh lish So I said in otten forever This is the end'

"Verily, I laid the book to rest as I soon must be laid to rest! Had you not coht would have been true--"

"But it isn't, not by a jugful!" exclaiineer joyously, and stood up in the die the face of things considerably! How? Never mind just yet But let's have a look at the old voluine a book carried about for a thousand years and read by at least thirty generations of men! The book, father! The book!"

Already the patriarch had arisen and now he gestured at the heavy bench of stone

"Can you move this, my son?" asked he "The place of the book lies beneath"

"Under there, eh? All right!" And, needing no other invitation, he set his strength against the neiss

It yielded at the second effort and, sliding ponderously to one side, revealed a cavity in the stone floor sohteen inches in breadth

Over this the old man stooped

"Help me, son," bade he "Once I could lift it with ease, but now the weight passes ht of a book? But--where is it? In this packet, here?"

He touched a large and close-wrapped bundle lying in the little crypt, dimly seen by the flicker of the oily wick

"Yea Raise it out that I may show you!" answered the patriarch His hands treerness; in his blind eyes a sudden fever seemed to burn For here was his dearest, his -worshipped outer world--the world of the vague past and of his distant ancestors--the world that Stern and Beatrice had really known and seen, yet which to him was only "all a wonder and a wild desire"