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rolled up at least ten times; the arms of his jersey reached a long way beyond his fingers, and he was always having to roll up the sleeves. He had a green felt hat which had been a Sunday-best hat in its youth before the rats got at it; it came well down over his ears, and the brim rested on his shoulders. He decided to call himself “Ó. Kárason of Ljósavík.” He addressed himself by this name, and talked a lot to himself. “Ó. Kárason of Ljósavík, there you stand!” he said. Yes, there he stood.
    His foster mother was rummaging in the lumber box one day for something she had lost, with the boy behind her, when out of the rubbish came the remains of a tattered old book.
    “Can I have it?” asked Ó. Kárason of Ljósavík.
    “Certainly not!” said Kamarilla. “The very idea!”
    But even so he managed to get hold of the book without his foster mother’s knowledge, and he stuck it under his jersey and kept it at his breast, close to his heart. He tried to read it in secret, but it was printed in Gothic lettering and the title page was missing. Every time he thought he was beginning to understand the book someone would come along and he would have to hide it hastily under his jersey again; he was often very close to being caught. What could there be in his book? He kept his own book against his own heart, and did not know what was in it. He was determined to keep it until he grew up. But then pages began to drop out of it here and there, and it became more and more difficult to read the longer he kept it hidden next to his bare skin. It was as if the book had been dipped into a pot of fat.
    There was often an itch at his heart because of the book, but that did not matter. It was a secret to own such a book; it was really a kind of refuge, even though he had no idea what was in the book. He was sure it was a good book, and it is fun having a secret if it is not anything wicked—one has plenty to think about all day, and one dreams about it at night.
    But on the first day of summer the secret was discovered. Kamarilla the housewife made him change his underclothes after the winter; this ceremony took place up in the loft in the middle of the day, and he was taken unawares by it. He peeled off his clothes one by one, and his heart beat furiously; finally he took off his shirt. There was no way of hiding the book any longer. It fell to the floor.
    “My goodness me!” said his foster mother. “God have mercy on me; what the devil’s the child got under his shirt? Magnína, come and see this dreadful sight!”
    The boy stood before them, stark naked and anguished, while the two women examined the book carefully.
    “Who gave you this book?”
    “I sort of just f-found it.”
    “Yes, it’s just as I thought. Not enough to be going around with a book, but a stolen one at that! Magnína, put this devilish thing in the fire at once!”
    He started crying then. This was the first great sorrow of his life he could remember. He was sure he had not cried so bitterly since he was sent away from his mother in a sack one winter’s day, long before memory began. Admittedly he had never understood the book, but that did not matter. What mattered was that this was his secret, his dream, his refuge; in short, it was his book. He wept as only children weep when they suffer injustice at the hands of those stronger than themselves. It is the most bitter weeping in the world. That was what happened to his book; it was taken from him and burned. And he was left standing naked and without a book on the first day of summer.

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    Other children had fathers and mothers and honored them, and they prospered and lived to a ripe old age; but he was often bitter towards his father and mother and dishonored them in his heart. His mother had cuckolded his father, and his father had betrayed his mother, and both of them had betrayed the boy. The only consolation was that he had a Father in heaven. And yet—it would have been better to