I stared very much. This speech did not sound very sane, and yet it was uttered by a quiet young lad who looked as if he might be trusted. I thought, "Oh! Here's a kind of poet, or something of that sort," and I said, smilingly, "How do you come to know about the Norsemen, then?"
"I have several books. I got one on a stall—a very good one about heroes. It has a lot in it about the Norsemen. If you come in you can see my books. You might have some tea. I put the kettle ready before I went out."
I stepped into the hut, and found it warm and cosy. A cake of barley bread was on the table, and a little black teapot stood there also. There was no furniture but a low wooden bed, one chair, a settle, and a broad shelf. On the shelf was a slate scrabbled all over with geometrical figures, and one of these figures was a parabola with two tangents drawn touching. This puzzled me much. I sat down to warm my hands and my half-frozen face, and when I felt comfortable I said,
"Do you read conic sections, young gentleman?"
His bonnet was off now, and I saw his broad, compact forehead and his massive temples. He looked capable of reading anything.
He replied, quite simply:
"Oh, yes! I read geometrical conics."
"And did you teach yourself?"
"Yes. It isn't hard after you've got over the sixth book of Euclid."
I grew more and more puzzled and interested. We had some tea, which made me feel positively luxurious, and then I looked at the backs of the books. There were "The Pilgrim's Progress," and "Tappan on the Will." Then came Shakespeare, a shilling edition of Keats, Drew's "Conic Sections," Hall's "Differential Calculus," Baker's "Land Surveying," Carlyle's "Heroes," a fat volume of Shelley, "The Antiquary," White's "Selborne," Bonnycastle's "Algebra," and five volumes of "The Tales of the Borders."