Sailor gasped in astonishment. He had always been led to believe that to learn to read and write was a task of superhuman difficulty. Some of his friends at Blackhampton had attended a night school now and again, but none of them had been able to make much of the racket of reading and writing, except one, Nick Price, who had a gift that way and was good for nothing else. Besides, as soon as he really took to the game a change came over him. Finally, he left the town. "I'd never be able to read an' write," said Sailor. "Why not?" said Klondyke. "Why not, like anybody else ... if you stuck it? Of course, you'd have to stick it, you know. It mightn't come very kind at first." This idea was so entirely new that Sailor rose with quite a feeling of excitement from the upturned bucket on which he sat. "Honest, mister," he said, gazing wistfully into the face of Klondyke, "do you _fink_ I could?" "Sure," said Klondyke. "Sure as God made little apples." Sailor decided that he would think it over. It was a very important step to take. XVIII Klondyke's library consisted of two volumes: the Bible and "Don Quixote." Sailor knew a bit about the former work. The Reverend Rogers had read it aloud on a famous occasion when Henry Harper had had the luck to be invited to a real blowout of tea and buns at the Brookfield Street Mission. That was a priceless memory, and Henry Harper always thought that to hear the Reverend Rogers read the Bible was a treat. Klondyke, who was not at all like the Reverend Rogers in word or deed, said it was "a damned good book," and would sometimes read in it when he was at a bit of a loose end. It was by means of this volume that Sailor learned his alphabet. Presently he got to spelling words of two and three letters, then he got as far as remembering them, and then came the proud day when he could write his name with a stump of pencil on a stray piece of the _Brooklyn Eagle_, in which Klondyke had packed his tooth brush, the only one aboard the _Margaret Carey_. "What is your name, old friend?" Klondyke asked. "Enry Arper." "H-e-n with a Hen, ry--Henry. H-a-r with a Har, p-e-r--Harper." "There ain't no aitch in Arper," said Sailor. "Why not?" Enry Arper was Sailor's own private name, which he had been given at his birth, which he had used all his life. He had always felt that as it was the only thing he owned, it was his to do with as he liked. Therefore he was determined to spell it according to his fancy. He wouldn't admit that there could possibly be an aitch in Arper; and for some little time his faith in Klondyke's competence was a bit shaken, for his mentor was at pains to make out that there could be and was. Henry Harper stuck to his ground, however. "It's me own name," he said, "an' I oughter know." Klondyke was amused. He seemed rather to admire Sailor's attitude. No doubt he felt that no Englishman is worth his salt who doesn't spell his name just as the fancy takes him.