Page:The queen's museum, and other fanciful tales.djvu/40

 said the Stranger, 'but I see the force of it. It is true that different people like different things. But how shall we find out what the different people like? '

'By asking them,' said the Pupil.

'Good!' cried the Captain, who preferred action to words. 'This night we will ask them.'

He then drew upon the sand a plan of the city,—(with which he was quite familiar, having carefully robbed it for many years)—and divided it into twenty-eight sections, each one of which was assigned to a man. 'I omit you,' the Captain said to the Stranger, 'because I find that you are not expert at climbing.' He then announced that at night the band would visit the city, and that each man should enter the houses in his district, and ask the people what it was in which they took the greatest interest.