Page:Arthur Stringer-The Loom of Destiny.djvu/195

The Heart's Desire had to begin all over again and keep eating up until the men were all gone. Tigers, in fact, from the first day Teddie overheard Bud Persons expatiating on their ferocity, had a peculiar fascination for him; only sometimes they invaded his dreams by night and made him wake with feelings of unutterable terror.

The child, as he grew older, also took a strange delight in watching people pass up and down the Place. He would suppose with himself that some Great Power had ordained that if a man did not pass before he had taken twenty breaths he would have to drop down dead. By the hour he would patiently sit and test this supposition, glorying over each victory and depressed by each defeat.

Then he took passionately to papers, books, and pictures. He came across a number of old "Illustrated News," with pictures of the siege of Paris, and over these pictures of war and adventure he would pore by the hour. He had refused to go to the Night School, and could not read, but he 183