'Come into the house, then, and you shall touch it!' exclaimed Oscar. He sprang up and went into the house, and Kanker followed him readily enough. 'Let me put my fingers on it--that's all I ask,' he kept repeating. 'Let me touch it.' 'There!' said Oscar, 'there it is on that shelf. Do you believe now?' Kanker took the book down from the shelf, and felt it all over. 'I believe that this is something that feels like a book,' he said at last. 'But I don't believe it is a book until I see it opened; and then I shan't believe it has the pictures you talk about unless I see them, and can put my finger on them; and I don't believe you can open it.' 'I can open it!' cried Oscar. 'If you can do it, then why don't you?' Kanker replied. Now Oscar knew that the mystic words which undid the clasp were a secret which he had no right to disclose. But he wanted so much to show Kanker the inside of the book, and make him acknowledge that he was wrong, that everything else seemed of little account in comparison. He took the book from Kanker's hands. As he did so, a strange feeling came over him. A voice, that seemed to speak not to his ears, but within him, bid him pause. Did he care so much for this Kanker, with his flat face and his great red hands, as to betray the secret which his mother had confided to him? Oscar hesitated. 'Ha! I knew you were lying!' said Kanker, with his disagreeable laugh. 'You shall see that I am not!' retorted Oscar, becoming angrier than ever. Then he began to repeat the mystic words. But he found it hard to pronounce them, and some of them he could scarcely remember. His teeth chattered as he went on, and his heart beat painfully. But Kanker was watching him askance with his pale spectacled eyes, and Oscar would not stop. At last he had spoken all the words; the clasp flew back; the book opened! 'There!' said Oscar, thrusting it into Kanker's hands. 'It is open: now look for yourself!' Then he turned away, and hid his face in his hands. All of a sudden he heard again Kanker's hateful spluttering laugh. He looked up in astonishment. Kanker was pointing contemptuously to the page. 'No pictures here!' he was saying. 'Show me your pictures! There's nothing but printing here, and very stupid commonplace printing too!' Oscar fixed his eyes upon the book; but they were darkened, and at first he could see nothing. At length his sight cleared; but, alas! it was as Kanker had said: there were no pictures in the book, no beauty, no life, and no mystery. It was just like any other book--ordinary pages printed with ordinary print. There had been some terrible loss, but whether the loss were in Oscar or in the book, Oscar could not tell. He stood there unable to speak, and almost to think.