Then several developments followed each other in quick succession. First of all his father bought him a season ticket at the public baths in the North River and made him join a class of small boys for instruction in the manly art of swimming. The world was opening up, Keith felt, and his father was lured to the verge of openly expressed satisfaction at finding that the boy's timidity did not extend to cold water.

No sooner, however, had he mastered the mechanics of the thing sufficiently to graduate from the board-walk onto a cork pillow in the water, than he had to quit because the whole family was "going into the country" for the summer. To Keith this meant a chance of playing with other children without having to ask permission every time and rarely getting it. To his mother it meant a distinct social advance, as no family staying in town all summer could be held really respectable.

The "country" was located on one of the numerous islands forming the outskirts of the city and could be reached by the father after he finished work by a fifteen-minute ride on one of the innumerable little steamboats running back and forth like so many busy shuttles across every sheet of water in the vicinity of Stockholm. Even then it was a suburb, but the houses were called villas, and there were plenty of trees between the buildings, and the roads meandering whimsically among miniature lawns and gardens had no pavements, and the lake came right up to the door.

There the father had rented a single room from some acquaintances who made their home on the island all the year round. The man was a German who had recently returned to Sweden after serving as a noncommissioned officer in the Franco-Prussian war--a stocky Bavarian with a tremendous black beard, a fondness for top-boots and long-stemmed pipes, and a startling tendency to shout every communication in the form of a command. He was a good-natured soul nevertheless, in spite of his appearance, his occasional bursts of temper, and his exaggerated regard for discipline, and he was full of stories about real fighting that differed puzzlingly from what Keith had read about such matters. Uncle Laube had a pet phrase that stuck in the boy's mind and exercised a corroding influence on some of his most cherished sentiments:

"A man must be able to fight, but it is black hell when he has to."

There were three children in the family--a boy two or three years older than Keith, a girl of his own age and a baby sister. The boy was named Adolph and the elder girl Marie. All three of them, but especially the boy, were being brought up in strict Teutonic fashion, which made a sort of super-religion out of obedience. At the mere sound of his father's voice, Adolph trembled and stiffened up like a recruit under training. Once the two boys and Marie strayed beyond bounds to a place where some timber rafts were tied up along the shore. Adolph led the way onto the rafts and the two others followed. It was great fun jumping from log to log where two rafts met, until Marie suddenly slipped into the water and began to sink like a stone. Quick as a flash Adolph dropped on his knees on a log that was partly under water, grabbed the girl by her hair and pulled her out. On their return home, Adolph was licked until he could not stand on his feet for leading the smaller children into mischief. Then he got a crown for the pluck shown in saving his sister's life.

This even balancing of justice made a deep impression on Keith. He thought and thought of it, and his reason, which already was very active, appreciated the logic of such a dispensation, but his heart rebelled strangely and turned for a while to his own father as a paragon of mildness, while the black-bearded Uncle Laube became an object of repulsion bordering on hatred. Fortunately the disciplinarian was away most of the day and Keith was running wild around the island. This was not possible without some protests from his mother, who regarded all water outside of a tub with deep distrust. He nevertheless maintained an unusual degree of independence until one day, while playing in one of the rowboats lying outside a small pier near their house, he, too, fell in and was pulled out by Adolph.

The children were alone at the time. Keith had no consciousness of having been in danger, but he was in a funk because of his wet clothing. Instead of going home at once, he ran to an open spot at the other end of the island and played in the sun to get dry. After a while his mother appeared, disturbed by his long absence. There was nothing to do but to respond to her call, although he did so most reluctantly, his clothing still being damp. His slow movements aroused her suspicion, and in another moment the awful truth was out.

"You might have drowned," his mother cried, too frightened to scold. "Or you might have caught cold and died of that. Perhaps ... you had better come home at once."

"No," protested Keith. "Adolph was there, and it hasn't been cold at all."

"But think, Keith," his mother remonstrated, her eyes dim with tears, "you wouldn't care to die and leave me?"

"I don't want to leave you," the boy said, "and I was not going to."

She took his head between her two hands and looked long into his eyes before she asked at last:

"Are you not scared of death?"

"I don't know," he stammered, wincing slightly under her stare. He could not grasp what she was driving at. Death carried no clear meaning to him. It had never touched his real inner life, and he never thought of it. No matter how frightened he became, it never occurred to him that he might cease to exist. Even his dreams had no colouring of that kind.

In spite of his mother's anxiety, he learned to swim that summer. He liked it and did it rather well for his age. But he never ventured very far out. Rebel as he might against the check on his movements, his mother's attitude had left a lasting mark on him, and avoiding needless risks seemed a natural thing to him. As a result of this inhibition, all his outdoor playing lacked that complete abandon which is the soul of it. He been made an indoor child beyond retrieve.

Being so much in the open air and moving about as a child should, his nights during that summer passed mostly without dreams of any kind, and also without other disturbances worth speaking of. He was too healthily tired for anything but sleep.

The winter nights, following days spent largely indoors with little company and less exercise, were quite different. Then the passing from wakefulness to sleep took him through a dangerous twilight period, when games of the kind learned behind the big rock seemed not only natural, but the most enticing thing in the world. And the more he was thrown back on his own resources, the more tempting those games became. They represented, besides, something that was entirely his own, with which no one else could interfere. It was a secret that would have been the sweeter for being shared with some one else, he felt, but Johan's peculiar attitude in this matter had filled him with a shyness not his own by nature.

Then, with the sleep, came also the dreams. At first they were, or seemed to be, mere plays of fancy--shadowy repetitions of daylight experiences in clownish distortion. Then they began to change. An element of unrest, and finally of dread, began to fill them. This did not happen, however, until the same elements had found a place in his waking life, and particularly not until the hours of that twilight period had developed into a source of increasingly acute conflict.

Nothing palpable had happened. Nothing had been said openly to convince him that his secret was known and that it was evil. Yet the air about him seemed full of suspicion and suspense and menace. The mere way in which his mother looked at him at times filled his soul with sinister misgivings. And she was always talking about temptations and dangers that walk in the dark. Or else she dropped mysterious warnings about the duty of keeping one's soul and body clean and pure.

It was all very disturbing, and he should have liked to ask questions, but always some imperious force within himself kept him back. He felt that his sweet secret would never bear open discussion, but the more desperately he clung to it, the more his mind was poisoned with doubts out of which soon grew fears.

Thus began the new dream life.

He was as a rule the only living being in those dreams. Everything else consisted of lifeless things, and mostly of spaces and dimensions rather than of objects. The dominant characteristic was an increase of size proportional to the increase of distance from himself. He found himself, for instance, in the midst of a vast space laid out in squares. Where he stood at the centre, those squares were just large enough to hold him. Then, as his glance passed outward, the squares became larger and larger, until at last their dimensions became gigantic. Soon they began to move toward him, growing smaller as they approached, and yet filling his soul with a horror based entirely on the monstrous size of those squares that were still miles away. Or he walked down a corridor built of stones that, as it opened out in front of him, expanded indefinitely until it assumed proportions that filled him with a sickening sense of his own smallness. As he moved forward, the corridor automatically contracted, but always the horror of those immeasurable vastnesses still ahead of him continued dominant and inevitable. At other times sums of figures came moving toward him from every direction, and the farther away from him they were, the more enormous they grew, until his mind no longer could take them in, and his heart quaked at the thought that sooner or later one of them would reach him in its original awe-inspiring immensity.

He tried once to tell his mother about those dreams, but found it impossible to express what he wished to describe. Not long afterwards he was aroused in the middle of the night by his mother calling him by name. Her voice betrayed worry.

"What's the matter, Keith," she asked when at last he woke up sufficiently to answer her call. "Were you dreaming?"

"I don't know," replied the boy, and at that moment he didn't know.

"I thought first you were crying," explained the mother, "and then I heard that you were counting something."

"He was probably repeating his multiplication table," muttered the father. "I wish he would learn his lessons in the daytime, so that we could sleep in peace at night."

The next morning Keith had forgotten all about it but his mother reminded him of what had happened during the night in order to find out whether he had any bad dreams. Keith shook his head. Then a thought flashed through his mind.

"Do I often talk in my sleep," he asked.

"Hardly ever," said his mother. "But the other night you read the Lord's Prayer from beginning to end, and I wish you would read it as nicely when are saying your prayers before going to sleep."

"He is studying too much," Granny put in from the kitchen. "His nose is always buried in a book. That's the whole trouble, I tell you."

"No, mamma, I don't think reading does him any harm," said Keith's mother, and for some reason Keith felt relieved by the diversion.

Even Keith could not escape a feeling about this time of having arrived at some sort of station or landmark on his road through life.

He was frightfully self-centred. He seemed to be thinking about nothing but himself. In reality, however, he was not reflecting at all on the character and probable course of his life. It was all a matter of feeling and what concerned him was merely the comforts or discomforts, pleasures or pains, exhilarations or boredoms of the passing moment. The future was a word that, at the most, implied things that might happen a few days after tomorrow. The convinced visioning of events a year or more distant was still utterly beyond him. And the past seemed to vanish with the setting sun of the day just ended.

Yet he was dimly aware of facing a transition that, somehow, must make a great change in his entire life. Something that he could not define was drawing to an end, and something else, equally indefinable, was about to begin. The "school for small children" which he had left, and the "school for boys" into which he would soon enter, were the symbols used by his mind to express the passing out of one phase of life into another, but as such they suggested the actual change without revealing it. And there were moments when Keith's vague efforts to look ahead were accompanied by a sense of crushing dread, while at other times they might fill him with a never before tasted fervor of existence.

He was near the completion of his ninth year. It seemed quite an age, but this appearance was contradicted by troublesome facts. He was very small for his age and hopelessly tied to the apron strings of his mother in spite of all his father's efforts to pry him loose. The reason for this failure was that his father lacked the time or the capacity for winning the boy's whole-hearted attention and affection.

The one thing the father seemed to care for on his return home was to be left alone with his own preoccupations, and these did not include the boy. He could not unbend. He could not subordinate his own momentary desire or disinclination to an interest essentially foreign to his own self. In other words, he was just as self-centred as Keith, and just as unreflecting on the whole. Both lived completely in the present, and both wished to escape from it. The only difference between them was that while Keith sought his escape in space, so to speak, by means of his books, the father's only road of escape led him into a past of which the boy formed no part.

Either through some fault of his own nature, or through the restrictive policy of his parents, Keith at nine had formed no real attachments outside of his immediate surroundings, and no life of his own that was not enclosed by the walls of his childhood home. This state of affairs tended always to throw him back on the mother as his most satisfactory source of inspiration and the magnetic pole of his emotional compass. And she on her part left no effort untried that could help to fasten his affections more closely to her.

Unconsciously but increasingly she worked to cut the boy off from all the rest of the world in order that she might have him the more exclusively to herself. She expressed openly the wish that he might be a girl, because girls in those days were so much less likely to escape the parental protection.

The boy was pleased by her attempts at monopolization. There was something flattering and softly reassuring about her passionate pleas for the uppermost place in his heart. And yet he rebelled with increasing violence against the closeness of her clutch on him. He seemed to choke at times, and a blind hatred rose within him without ever revealing itself as in any way related to his mother. One of the dominant emotions of this and the following period of his life was one of intense impatience that seemed to be directed toward no particular object. Once in a great while he turned toward his father with an expectation of relief, but this expectation was always foiled, and so he was plunged back again and again into an inner life of his own that fed almost exclusively on books and had little or nothing in common with the reality to which the new school was supposed to form a gateway.

The new school was located in another part of the South End, separated only by the churchyard from the old church of St. Mary Magdalene. It was a state institution demanding an entrance fee, which, although quite reasonable, yet sufficed to keep out the children of mere wage earners. It was a school for the offspring of the "better classes" and good enough for all but the most select who must needs turn to certain private institutions of still greater exclusiveness for instruction.

Its official title was St. Mary's Elementary School and it had only five grades or classes, as they were called, being supplemented by a "gymnasium," from which the pupils passed on to the university. No boy was admitted under nine, but there seemed to be no limit at the other end, for at the time of Keith's entrance the upper grades still held a few youngsters with well developed moustaches who, from the viewpoint of Keith's own peach-skinned diminutiveness, looked like veritable patriarchs. Stories were afloat about their actually being addressed as "mister" by the teachers.

Admission was conditioned by examinations held in the school itself, and thither Keith was escorted by his mother one late August day. All novelties stimulated him, and to his inexperience the rather dingy old school seemed enormously impressive. The mere fact that it occupied a whole building all by itself was enough. In addition, however, it had an assembly hall large enough to hold several hundred boys, and there were numerous rooms capable of holding thirty or forty boys. Every pupil had a seat and a small desk of his own. Seeing these desks, with inkstands sunk into their tops, and special grooves for the penholders, and lids that could be raised, Keith knew that he must pass the examinations or die from a broken heart.

The officiating teachers were stern but not unkind. Keith was nervous from eagerness, but neither frightened nor embarrassed. The questions asked were ridiculously easy, he thought. When his turn came, he answered triumphantly, as if he had been playing a game in which he was quite skilled. Finding him willing and well prepared, the examiners felt themselves challenged and pressed him more and more. Still he held his own. It ended with a sense of triumph on his part, but nothing was said about his having passed.

The wait that followed until all the boys had been questioned was the only difficult part of the ordeal. Waiting patiently was not a strong point with Keith. Finally his mother appeared to take him home, and the moment he looked at her he knew. She was in such high spirits that she had to try a joke.

"Too bad you couldn't pass," she said in a voice she vainly tried to make sad.

He knew it was a joke, and yet his heart leaped into his throat and his eyes filled with tears. Then she had to console him, and to do so, she let out the whole story. The teachers had told her that he knew enough to go right into the third grade, but on account of his age they had advised her not to let him start above the second grade. It was a whole year saved, but that was not what she was thinking of. Her son had distinguished himself by giving proof of a brightness that had aroused unusual attention among the teachers. Her pride in this fact was such that Keith really began to think that a new life was about to begin for him.

And that night, when his father came home, the whole story had to be told over again with new details, and Keith had the pleasure of seeing an expression of undisguised satisfaction on his father's face. It did not last very long, but it was sweet to watch while it lasted. Then the father resumed his usual manner of stern indifference as he turned to the boy:

"That's all very well, Keith, but it means also that they will expect more of you than of the other boys, and so you have to study harder than ever in order to make good with them."

Keith didn't care. It had been a wonderful day, he felt. He had had his first taste of public approval, and he had noticed the effect of it on his father and mother. As for the need of studying--that was easy. And he didn't have to begin his studies at once anyhow.

After the opening of the term, it took Keith only a day or two to realize that, literally, he had entered a new world, quite different, in spirit as well as in appearance, from anything previously experienced.

The first shock came as soon as he had taken his place in the class and the first lesson had begun. He was no longer Keith. Christian names were not at all in use. Everybody was addressed by his family name both by the teachers and by his fellow pupils. Keith had become Wellander, and the first time he heard himself called by that name he blushed as deeply as if his most intimate privacy had suddenly been violated. In a few hours, however, the unfamiliarity of the name as a standing appellation had worn off, and then the pride of the thing sent a pleasant glow through his whole body, making him for a brief, dizzy moment glimpse the glory of manhood.

His next discovery went far deeper. He had attended school four years in succession, but only as you drop into a strange room on a visit. He had never belonged in or to the school, and the school had neither limited nor extended his individuality. Now he found himself completely taken possession of and made a part of something larger than himself, a carefully correlated and guarded system of ranks and rules and traditions. In retrospect the former school seemed as accidental and fleeting as a street crowd, while the new one was an institution with a jealously preserved and deeply revered history to which each new pupil was expected to add more lustre. But most remarkable of all seemed the fact that this collective body added something to the stature of every boy that became a part of it.

Membership was as onerous as it was honourable, not only within the school precints but anywhere. To belong to "Old Mary" was to carry a sacred duty along wherever one went. She was like an ambitious parent, never jealous of the reputation of her children. Mostly it was a question of refraining from this or that thing which less conspicuously placed boys might venture at will, but at times it might imply the performance of fierce deeds of bravery in the face of overwhelming odds. There was the rival school of St. Catherine and several "popular" schools that had no social standing whatsoever, but contained pupils with harder fists and less generous ideas of fighting than any boy within Old Mary. When certain words of derision were flung upon the air by members of those inferior institutions, there was nothing left for a pupil of St. Mary's but to fight.

Little by little these strange facts penetrated Keith's subconsciousness and set up a never ending conflict between pride and precaution, between his wish to rise to a new ideal and his instinctive tendency to obey his mother's almost hysterical injunctions against fighting of any kind. Fortunately his road to and from school permitted him to follow the principal streets where the traffic was sufficient to act as a check on combative youngsters, and an additional protection was derived from his small size which caused the hostile elements to overlook his existence unless he appeared in the company of more developed schoolmates. And as he mostly walked alone, his comings and goings were uneventful as a rule. But that did not prevent him from imagining dangers and to suffer from them almost as much as if they had been real. There were times when he could not help thinking of himself as a coward.

Such estimates of himself were not wholly checked by an incident that occurred within the school precincts early in the first term. There was another boy in the same class named Bauer, who seemed the living counterpart of Keith--just as undersized and lonely and nervous. From the first there was a hostile tension between those two, and soon it came to open war. It broke out in a pause between two lessons when practically all the boys were gathered in the schoolyard. Before Keith quite knew what had happened, he found himself fighting Bauer. First they used their fists and then they wrestled. The rest of the boys formed a ring about them and egged them on.

They were well matched in their common weaknesses and both developed a certain courage during the stress of conflict. The difference between them was that Bauer apparently wanted to lick Keith, while the latter thought of nothing but to defend himself. The idea of inflicting pain on another human being was so foreign to Keith that it never took tangible form in his mind. The result was that Bauer's greater aggressiveness carried the day, and soon Keith found himself prone on his back with a triumphant Bauer straddling his chest.

At that moment both boys became guilty of serious breaches against time-honoured school etiquette. Bauer struck the defenceless Keith square in the face with his clenched fist, and Keith burst into tears. Quick as a flash one of the older boys grabbed Bauer by the scruff of his neck and hurled him halfway across the yard, while another one plucked Keith from the ground and shoved him toward the stairway with a contemptuous:

"The classroom for cry-babies."

The humiliation felt by Keith was so intense that he wondered whether he could stay in the school. Nothing but the thought of his father kept him from returning home. But the cloud had a silver lining. Though no one else knew, he knew that he had started crying from rage, and not from fear. And this fact in connection with his realization of not having had any thought of running away during the fight made him hesitate in his final judgment upon himself. But he felt quite sure that fighting was not his chosen field. The effect on his nerves was too damaging.

In the lower three grades, a single teacher with the title of Class Principal had complete charge of the morals, manners and instruction of the children in his grade. Keith had the luck of falling into the hands of one of the kindest and shrewdest men in the school--a man who seemed to understand that his mission was to guide rather than to drive, and who, in addition to his broad, human sympathy, possessed a genuine sense of humour.

His name was Lector Dahlström, but everybody spoke of him as Dally, and little did he care. He was large of body and large of mind, with a most impressive girth and a voice that commanded attention without grating on supersensitive nerves. He had very rarely to assert his authority, but if ever the need arose, no one remained long in doubt as to who was the master, and a recurrence of the offense was unheard of. Even on such occasions he never used corporal punishment, although at that time the right of such administration still remained with him. He simply appealed to the self-respect and the sense of fairness in his pupils, asking no one to render what lay beyond his capacity. The main secret of his hold on the boys, however, lay in his ability to keep them interested, and to do so he frequently broke away from the text books and time-worn pedagogical methods. If there was anything he deposed, it was learning things by rote.

The boys sat in rows of four and were placed with regard to scholarship and behaviour, so that the best pupils were farthest away from the teacher and the least reliable ones right in front of him. Keith found himself number two in the class, and that position at first tickled his pride considerably. Later, as the term went by, and boys now and then were shifted up or down, he began to wonder why he always remained number two. It was reassuring in a way, as showing that he held his own, but he failed to see why another boy should always remain primus, although his performances during lessons did not surpass those of Keith. Once he dared even give utterance to some such speculation in his father's hearing, but was promptly put down with a stern:

"If the teacher puts another boy above you, he has probably some very good reason for doing so, and you had better feel thankful for being where you are in the class."

"Humph," said his mother. "You forget, Carl, that the father of that boy is one of the richest bankers in the city."

This was a way of looking at it which had never occurred to Keith. He was pretty contented, on the whole, and like all the rest, he placed the most implicit trust in the teacher's justice. From the very start, he had a feeling that Dally kept a special eye on him, and yet he was rarely spoken to except when questions were passed around. Even then the teacher was rather apt to leave Keith alone to such an extent that the boy now and then began to think himself disliked. Always, however, when he got to this point, some little incident would occur that restored his faith both in himself and in the teacher.

There could be no doubt that he knew his lessons as well as any one in the class, if not better, and he shone still more when Dally appealed to the natural intelligence of the boys by straying far away from the beaten and dusty path of the text books. Whenever he had stirred them by some excursion of this kind and began to ask questions in order to find out how far they had followed him, Keith's right hand was sure to shoot excitedly upwards in order to get him the coveted chance of answering. And it seemed as if he could answer almost every question asked except a few that went so far beyond the bounds laid down for the class that the teacher deemed it fair to warn them that inability to answer would be no shame. That was the kind of questions Dally generally reserved for Keith, and when Keith couldn't answer, it didn't console him very much that no one else could. Once, when his hand went up as usual and, to his astonishment, he obtained the permission to answer, Keith, to his still greater astonishment, suddenly discovered that he had no answer to give.

"I thought so," said Dally with a broad grin on his good-humoured face. "Do you know what a fuzzy-wuzz is, Wellander?"

Keith shook his head, his face crimson with chagrin and humiliation as the whole class burst into anticipatory laughter.

"That's a chap who wants to do all of it all the time," explained Dally.

Keith did not quite see the point, but he kept his right arm a little more in check for a while after that, until one day the lesson was forgotten and history repeated itself.

"Now Keith is fuzzy-wuzzying again," said Dally, and Keith thought he would sink through the floor. His mind was quite made up never to ask permission to answer another question again, but that same afternoon, during the lesson in Swedish history, Dally dropped all questioning and asked Keith to explain to the class the main factors leading up to the Wars of Reformation--which Keith spent twenty minutes in doing while all the rest of the class had to sit still listening to him.

Keith could not remain isolated to the same extent as in the earlier schools. Inevitable community sprang from similarity of sex and age alone. In the same direction worked the system of teaching which called for the united attention of the entire class during every moment of the lesson. It was impossible to form a part of the class without being in contact with all its other members. The boy who read aloud or answered a question became subjected to the criticism or admiration of all the rest. Rivalry in any field of study was just as likely to arise between two boys at different ends of the room as between those sitting side by side. The spirit of Dally tended to assist this fusion of personalities in every way, and the boy who kept apart was sure sooner or later to run foul of his good-humoured but well-aimed sallies. His attitude implied no tyranny, and he strove for no deadening conformity. On the contrary, he always spoke of a strongly marked individuality as the object of all education, but he tried to develop it by fearless contact with others rather than by jealous withdrawal.

Keith for the first time found himself part of a society, and he liked it because the teacher's insistence on scholarly achievement as the only standard of comparison gave him a chance to hold his own among a group of boys, most of whom counted themselves his superiors in every other respect. He was small and poor, of humble origin, without influential connections, without worldly advantages of any kind, but when mind was pitched against mind, he felt second to none--except in mathematics, where he could compete neither with Davidson, the Jewish banker's son who was primus, or with that gawky, cumbersome Anderson whose dullness in every other respect always kept him near the bottom of the class. For this reason Keith differed from most of the others by liking school better during the lessons than at any other time.

There were games in the schoolyard during the pauses, and some of these were played in large groups or by teams. This occurred particularly when echoes from some war abroad caused the whole school to divide into rival armies for the staging of regular battles, as during his second year, when all had to be Turks or Russians. But Keith didn't like battles except in books, and mostly the pauses broke up the class communities into small coteries or pairs. And the moment this happened, Keith found himself outside. He belonged to no special group. His appearance in the yard raised no delighted hails. He had no chum of his very own with whom to exchange secrets or lay plans for common adventures. And but for Dally, he would probably have spent most of his free time in the classroom.

It was worse when the big pause came at eleven and every one went home for lunch, or when three o'clock brought school to a close for the day. Going to school alone was an experience shared by all, but on leaving it, the hurrying horde of youngsters, exuberant with freedom as so many colts, broke into little groups of two or three that had homes in the same neighbourhood. Now and then Keith would join a couple of other boys headed for the old City like himself, and they would not refuse his company, but there always was something between him and them that precluded real fellowship, and so he trudged his way homeward, alone most of the time. Then he was also sure of reaching home in the shortest possible time, so that his mother had no chance to become worried over him.

It happen now and then that a larger group was formed for some unusual exploit and that Keith became part of it by chance rather than choice. Once he accompanied such a group to that part of the harbour where tall-masted fullriggers with foreign flags lay nose by stern in unbroken line along the quay. Strange odours, fragrant or repulsive, filled the air. Jolly, loud-voiced men toiled mightily or lounged like monarchs among piles of casks and bags and boxes. For once Keith lost his usual timidity under such circumstances and threw himself whole-heartedly into anything the gang suggested. He even ventured to climb the mast of a ship as far as the foretop. When at last reluctantly he turned homeward, he felt like a hero, but when he caught sight of the tear-stained, fretted face of his mother, he knew at once that even such exaltation was not worth the price to be paid for it.

Unfortunately he had made himself popular that afternoon, and the next time a gang formed for a similar purpose, he was asked to join. But he shook his head, and being foolishly truthful by nature, he blurted out an embarrassed:

"My mother won't let me."

The answer was passed along. It was repeated in school the next day. Keith heard echoes of it for weeks. And it added a good deal to the invisible wall that seemed to rise about him wherever he went.

Yet he was not unhappy. There was in his nature a wonderful resiliency that never let his spirits drop beyond a certain point, and that always brought them back to highwater mark at the slightest encouragement.

He had discovered the school library. It was to him a marvellous treasure trove. Any book could be taken home, one at a time, after being registered with the teacher acting as librarian for the day. Nor were the books handed out to you arbitrarily. You browsed all by yourself, and picked and picked, and calculated, and went back on your choice a dozen times, until at last you struck a book so fascinating in its promises that all hesitation disappeared.

The father started to object, but was silenced by the explanation that the school authorities wanted the boys to borrow books from the library. That settled it, for discipline came first and even pleasure must be allowed if required by discipline. Had Keith been less honest or more imaginative in what may be called practical matters, his father's regard for authority might have offered more than one chance at liberties now denied, but this possibility never occurred to him, and so the library remained his one avenue of escape.

The books he chose puzzled and almost shocked the rotatory guardians of his sanctum. Once he picked an enormous volume on Greek mythology, full of pictures and translated passages from Homer and the dramatists.

"You don't want that, Wellander," the teacher said, eying him curiously, when Keith presented the book for registration.

"Yes, I do," replied Keith stoutly, but his heart began to quake at the thought that the cherished volume was going to be denied him.

"Do you mean to say that you intend to read it through?" the teacher persisted.

"Yes, I will," said Keith.

There was a long pause during which the teacher seemed to weigh the book in his hand as if wondering whether its very weight would be too much for the undersized little chap in front of him.

"All right," he said at last, "but I suppose that means you will have reading for the rest of this season."

Keith looked at the book more hopefully, and with hope came courage.

"I'll read it in three weeks," he said.

So he did, too, and when he turned in the book, the same teacher happened to be on duty, recognized him, and began to ask questions. When Keith had proved that the whole Olympian hierarchy was duly installed in his acquisitive brain, the teacher said with an amused but friendly smile:

"I think we shall let you have anything you want hereafter. What is it to be this time--philosophy?"

"No, I want another book of exploration," answered Keith, thawing under the smile. "And I want a real good one."

That was his favourite subject, and the book he chose was Speke's "Discovery of the Source of the Nile." Once launched on that memorable journey, he had no thought left for any explorations of his own.

During the fall and spring terms of that first year Keith had no sense of time. Days and weeks and months rolled by so smoothly that their passing was unnoticed. It is a question whether at any other period of his life--with one possible exception--he was more completely interested and, for that reason, satisfied.

One day he observed casually that the old trees in the churchyard sported tiny green leaves under a deliciously blue but still rather cold sky. A few days more, and he heard that commencement was at hand.

It was a time of great excitement in school. Who would pass and who would not? Falling through might mean another year in the same class, but beyond all doubt it meant a summer spent at work instead of playing. It was worse than a disgrace. It was a menace to liberty at the time of the year when liberty meant most.

Being second in the class, it never occurred to Keith that he might fail of promotion to a higher grade, but at that end there were possible prizes to consider. The class was full of gossip and speculation. Boys who had hardly spoken to each other before broke into heated discussions or formed belated friendships. In one way and another the fever infected Keith and spread from him to his parents, though his father as usual feigned complete indifference. From his mother he learned long before the startling fact was meant to reach his ears, that his father had actually asked a day off at the bank in order to attend the exercises. This news increased Keith's fear by several degrees. He had no idea what might happen, and it would be unthinkably dreadful to have the father present if anything went wrong. But on the other hand, if ... well, what was there to happen anyhow?

On the morning of the great day, a host of parents and relatives and other interested spectators crowded into the big assembly hall where places were reserved for them in the rear and along the walls. In the meantime the pupils gathered in their respective class-rooms, and from there they marched by twos to the hall, the lowest grade leading. Every boy was in his best clothes, and every one showed his nervousness in his own peculiar way. Keith laughed hysterically a few times before they started, and then he turned into an automaton that breathed and moved and heard and saw only as part of a gigantic machine. His own individuality seemed to melt and become a mere drop in the all-exclusive individuality of the school.

This mood lasted through the early part of the exercises, the prayer read by the primus of the senior class, the hymn singing, the Rector's speech, and so on. Everything came to him as out of a mist, and he was not even sufficiently conscious of himself to look around for a glimpse of his parents. When the distribution of exercises began, the whole atmosphere changed. Until then it had been collective and impersonal. Now it became intensely personal. Every one wanted to hear. Necks were craned, whispered questions asked. It was as if a sudden breeze had stirred waters which until then had been still as the mirroring surface of a forest pool. Keith's mood changed with the rest, and he grew painfully conscious of himself and his surroundings.

Starting with the lowest grade, the Rector read out the names of the prize winners, the character of the prizes, and sometimes the reasons why they were bestowed. At the mention of each name, a boy rose from his seat, squirmed past his closely packed comrades, marched up the centre aisle to the platform, bowed awkwardly to the Rector, grabbed the prize, bowed still more awkwardly if possible, and marched back to his seat with a face that burned or blanched, grinned or glowed, according to temperament.

The second grade was soon reached. Most of the prizes consisted of books. Davidson, primus, got two gilt-edged volumes of poetry. Keith caught a glimpse of them and experienced a twinge of envy. His heart was beating so that he thought he could hear it. His eyes clung to the Rector's mouth, and when the next name was read, he half rose. Then he sank back, and around him an ominous stillness seemed to reign.

The name was that of Runge, tertius, who got some historical work. Then quartus, Blomberg, who was a passionate botanist, received a valuable text book on his favourite subject. Still the rector went on, and Keith felt sure that his name had been passed over by some mistake, and that now it would come.

"A German lexicon for special attention to the student of that language," the Rector droned on.

Again Keith started to rise from his seat, but even as he did so, it flashed through his mind that he was given no more attention to German than to other studies.

"... to Otto Krass of the Second Grade," the Rector completed his sentence, holding out a book.

As Keith sank back on the bench, Krass, quintus, rose with an expression on his face as if he had become personally involved in a particularly incredible miracle.

A whisper ran through the rest of the class. Glances were cast at Keith, who felt them like so many lashes on bare skin although in every other respect he had once more become utterly unconscious of what happened about him.

By slow degrees he recovered so far that he could try to think, but the process was unendurable. There could be no accident. It was a deliberate slight aimed at him for some specific reason. He tried to think of the past year and its happenings in and out of school, but this effort produced no solution to the riddle.

Suddenly he bethought himself of his speculations concerning his place in the class. It seemed that he had been deeply envious of Davidson all that year. With a quick turn of the head he surveyed for a moment the haughty expression and narrowly drawn postures of the boy beside him. There was a trace of a sneer on that face, and again Keith's heart was flooded with resentment. But this mood changed abruptly into contriteness. Perhaps he was being punished by some one, by God--he hesitated at that thought--for grudging his schoolmate the place and the honours that he probably had deserved. Keith was the meanest of the mean....

Krass was back in his seat showing his book. He showed it to Keith also, but with a palpable embarrassment that touched the latter as an additional blow. Keith tried to say that it was nice, but his lips were too dry and stiff to produce a sound.

The Rector was still reading off names. To save himself from his own thoughts, Keith tried to listen. Soon he noticed that, without fail, the prizes went in unbroken sequence to the first four or five pupils in every grade. And suddenly he wondered whether his father and mother had noticed. What would they say? What could he say?

Then he remembered his mother's remark on hearing about his place in the class, and he wondered if it could be possible.... But the parents of Krass had neither wealth nor position. That much he knew.

The Rector's voice and manner became more and more impressive, and the prizes more and more valuable, as he passed higher and higher, until at last the senior class was reached--the boys who were now graduating into the gymnasium. They were his own pupils, and for each of the prize winners from the two branches of that class he had a word of special praise and good-will.

A restless stirring passed through the assembly as the boy expected to be the last recipient of special honours made his way to the platform and everybody prepared to rise for the singing of a closing hymn.

Still the old Rector, with his smooth-shaven and deeply furrowed Roman face, remained standing, and once more an expectant hush fell upon pupils and spectators. Apparently he intended, contrary to custom, to follow up the main ceremony of the day with some important announcement.

"One more prize remains to be distributed," he resumed with more than usual deliberation. "We do not have the pleasure of bestowing it regularly, because its conditions are unusual. It was the will of the donor that it should be given to that pupil who, regardless of grade and age, during the previous year had shown the relatively greatest aptitude, industry, and actual advance in knowledge. This year the prize, which consists of one hundred crowns in gold and is the largest at the disposal of our school, is to be distributed, and the pupil found worthy of this exceptional honour is...."

Every eye was on the Rector as he paused dramatically. Every one in the hall listened breathlessly to catch the favoured name. Keith listened like the rest, a little enviously perhaps, but without serious attention, for it had just occurred to him for the tenth time that the situation would have been so much less unbearable if only his father had stayed away.

"... this pupil is Keith Wellander of the Second Grade," the Rector concluded.

A murmur swept the hall, and Keith felt himself the centre of many eyes. The murmur grew as the winner failed to appear, but Keith could not move a limb. Dumbly and unbelievingly he stared at the Rector and the group of teachers seated around him on the platform.

"Come forward, Wellander," the Rector said in a friendly voice as if he could well understand the overwhelming effect of such distinction. At the same time Keith noticed Lector Dahlström rising partly from his seat on the platform as if to see whether anything might be the matter.

Had the ceiling opened and an angel appeared in a fiery chariot to call him heavenward, the boy could not have been more startled. It was as if a terrific blow had paralyzed all his senses. His classmates had to push him forward. He never knew how he reached the platform, where the Rector was waiting for him with a small package ready for delivery. Keith felt the weight of that package in his own hand and the gentle touch of the Rector's hand on his head. Words were uttered that he did not catch, and the room became filled with the noise of boisterous applause.

He bowed mechanically and turned to walk back to his seat, and as he did so, he noticed a white handkerchief waving at him from the rear of the hall. Behind the handkerchief he caught a glimpse of his mother's face, and a thought shot through his head:

"Papa is here and has heard all this!"

Then he relapsed into a state of utter oblivion of the surrounding world. The thing was too tremendous to be felt even. Automatically he moved out of the hall and back to the classroom with the rest. Dally was saying things to him, but he could not grasp a word. Now and then he became vaguely conscious of awed glances cast at him by the other boys. Some of them spoke to him, and in some strange way he managed to realize that Davidson was not among these.

At last he woke into full consciousness on the street, where he found himself walking homeward by his father's hand. The pressure of that hand seemed unusually soft and pleasant. The mother was talking eagerly and wiping her eyes between little happy bursts of laughter. The father listened for a long while in silence.

"Yes," he said at last, "it is not a bad beginning--if he can keep it up."

Keith felt for a moment as if he were walking on air, and he knew that he would keep it up--that after such a day nothing could prevent him from keeping it up. Then a bewildering thought appeared out of nowhere and began to buzz in his tired and over-excited brain.

"If I have done all that the Rector said," this thought demanded of him, "why in the world has Dally kept me sitting below Davidson who got nothing but books?"