"And what then?" said Em.
"Then he was alone there in that island with men to watch him always," said
her companion, slowly and quietly. "And in the long lonely nights he used
to lie awake and think of the things he had done in the old days, and the
things he would do if they let him go again. In the day when he walked
near the shore it seemed to him that the sea all around him was a cold
chain about his body pressing him to death."
"And then?" said Em, much interested.
"He died there in that island; he never got away."
"It is rather a nice story," said Em; "but the end is sad."
"It is a terrible, hateful ending," said the little teller of the story,
leaning forward on her folded arms; "and the worst is, it is true. I have
noticed," added the child very deliberately, "that it is only the made-up
stories that end nicely; the true ones all end so."
As she spoke the boy's dark, heavy eyes rested on her face.
"You have read it, have you not?"
He nodded. "Yes; but the Brown history tells only what he did, not what he
thought."
"It was in the Brown history that I read of him," said the girl; "but I
know what he thought. Books do not tell everything."
"No," said the boy, slowly drawing nearer to her and sitting down at her
feet. "What you want to know they never tell."
Then the children fell into silence, till Doss, the dog, growing uneasy at
its long continuance, sniffed at one and the other, and his master broke
forth suddenly:
"If they could talk, if they could tell us now!" he said, moving his hand
out over the surrounding objects--"then we would know something.
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