, and had learned to recite for his father. He found himself
repeating them, and there was no doubt that he realized more vividly than
do boys generally of his age the meaning of the author:

"The world was void:
The populous and powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless;
A lump of death, a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean, all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths."

Such fancies as these were not calculated to make him feel particularly
comfortable while carrying the torch. Such a person in such a situation
makes an especially inviting target of himself, and, although Fred dreaded
to see it burn itself out, when the chances were that he was likely to be
in sore need of the same, yet he had wrought himself up to such a pitch
that he more than once meditated extinguishing it altogether, with the
purpose of putting himself on an equality with those of his enemies who
might be prowling in the night around him.

"I wonder whether Mickey would be more likely to hear my pistol than a
shout or whistle?" he said, as he drew the weapon from his belt and held
it up to inspect it in the light of the flaring torch. "It seems to be all
right, although there's no telling how long since it has been loaded. Here
goes."

With this, he pointed the muzzle toward the cavern and pulled the trigger.

The response was as prompt as though he had charged the chamber but a
short time before, proving not only that the weapon was of the best
quality, but that the ammunition was equally so, and the slight moisture
that characterized the atmosphere of the cave had not been sufficient to
injure the charge. It seemed as if he had fired a cannon, the echoes
rolling, doubling, and repeating on themselves in the most bewildering and
terrifying fashion.

Fred could not understand how it was that such a pandemonium of sound
could escape filling the subterranean world from one end to the other, and
so he sat down on a ledge o

John Holland Rose (1855-1942) was an influential English historian who wrote a famous biography of French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and also wrote a history of Europe, entitled The Development of the European Nations. Rose was the basis for C. P. Snows fictional character M. H. L. Gay (see Years of Hope: Cambridge, Colonial Administrator in the South Seas, and Cricket by Philip Snow.)

Robert Grant may refer to: