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208 'A very curious place thou hast chosen, Isabel, wherein to have the ownership of the guitar engraved. How did ever any person get in there to do it, I should like to know?'

The girl looked surprisedly at him a moment; then took the instrument from him, and looked into it herself. She put it down, and continued.

'I see, my brother, thou dost not comprehend. When one knows everything about any object, one is too apt to suppose that the slightest hint will suffice to throw it quite as open to any other person. I did not have the name gilded there, my brother.'

'How?' cried Pierre.

'The name was gilded there when I first got the guitar, though then I did not know it. The guitar must have been expressly made for someone of the name of Isabel; because the lettering could only have been put there before the guitar was put together.'

'Go on—hurry,' said Pierre.

'Yes, one day, after I had owned it a long time, a strange whim came into me. Thou know'st that it is not at all uncommon for children to break their dearest play-things in order to gratify a half-crazy curiosity to find out what is in the hidden heart of them. So it is with children, sometimes. And, Pierre, I have always been, and feel that I must always continue to be a child, though I should grow to three-score years and ten. Seized with this sudden whim, I unscrewed the part I showed thee, and peeped in, and saw "Isabel." Now I have not yet told thee, that from as early a time as I can remember, I have nearly always gone by the name of Bell. And at the particular time I now speak of, my knowledge of general and trivial matters was sufficiently advanced to make it quite a familiar thing to me, that Bell was often a diminutive for Isabella, or Isabel. It was therefore no very strange affair,