Yes, he read the Bible to Martha, he read to her about the Prodigal Son, and then Edward repeated all that Martha had said. They laughed in chorus and drank up the rest of the beer. All that was pleasant and amusing in Anders showed itself when he laughed, although his laugh had a grating sound down in the throat; still it incited one to more fun, more mischief. So Edward had to tell all, and a little more than all. As he ran home later with the grand book under his arm, he had a kind of disgusted feeling. The effects of the beer were over, he was no longer tempted to laugh, and his wounded pride was satisfied; but Ole's trusting eyes seemed to meet him everywhere, as soon as he got out in the air. He tried to put it from him, he was so dreadfully tired; he would think no more about it this evening; but to-morrow--to-morrow he would ask Anders not to speak about it. But the next morning he overslept himself. He hurried on his clothes and rushed off, eating his bread-and-butter as he went along, and giving a rapid thought to "Les trois Mousquetaires," now his precious property; he longed for the afternoon to be able to read it. In school he stumbled through his lessons one by one, for he had learned nothing, and on Saturdays there was always so much. He worked on until two hours before the school closed; there was still to be French and Natural History, but to neither of these classes did he belong--so away he flew downstairs before any of the others. Just as he stood outside the school gates he saw Anders coming from the opposite side; he was going now to take his lesson in the upper class. Edward thought at once of the preceding day, and he felt anxious as to what Anders might take it into his head to tell; but at that very moment he caught sight of a monster steamer, a wreck, coming slowly in between the two piers, and all the people running by said there had never been so large a ship in the harbour before. She dragged along, hardly able to move, her masts gone, bulwarks all damaged, and the propped-up funnel all white with salt water up to the very top; was that another steamer towing her? Edward could not make out for the pier. Everyone was running that way; he ran too! Meanwhile Anders turned in at the school gate. Just as he opened it a class was over, and all the boys rushed down the stairs as through a long funnel, and out into the yard; it was a storm in a wizard's belly, the very house shook; first came one short, sharp yell, the first-comer's shout of delight; then a screaming of mingled voices high and low, some cracked and breaking ones toning down the whole; then a mighty shout from all together like a sea of fire shooting up to the sky, then half quenched on one side, but flaring up again on the other, then uniting in a broad glow over the whole yard.