It was as though a curious little tadpole which he held under his glass should suddenly lift its tail and begin to question him.
"I ?--no." He laughed his short thick laugh.

"I am a man who believes nothing, hopes nothing, fears nothing, feels nothing.

I am beyond the pale of humanity; no criterion of what you should be who live here among your ostriches and bushes." The next moment the stranger was surprised by a sudden movement on the part of the fellow, which brought him close to the stranger's feet.

Soon after he raised his carving and laid it across the man's knee.
"Yes, I will tell you," he muttered; "I will tell you all about it." He put his finger on the grotesque little mannikin at the bottom (ah! that man who believed nothing, hoped nothing, felt nothing; how he loved him!), and with eager finger the fellow moved upward, explaining over fantastic figures and mountains, to the crowning bird from whose wing dropped a feather.

At the end he spoke with broken breath--short words, like one who utters things of mighty import.
The stranger watched more the face than the carving; and there was now and then a show of white teeth beneath the moustaches as he listened.
"I think," he said blandly, when the boy had done, "that I partly understand you.