entering his door, his spare, tall frame
clearly outlined against the light within. Keith somehow felt as if he
were turning his back on a landmark.

Just as Keith approached the gate on his return home, a figure rose up
from a fence-corner and stood before him in the starlight.

"Good even'n', Mr. Keith." The voice was Dave Dennison's. Keith greeted
him wonderingly. What on earth could have brought the boy out at that
time of the night? "Would you mind jest comin' down this a-way a
little piece?"

Keith walked back a short distance. Dave was always mysterious when he
had a communication to make. It was partly a sort of shyness and partly
a survival of frontier craft.

Dave soon resolved Keith's doubt. "I hear you're a-goin' away and ain't
comin' back no more?"

"How did you hear that--I mean, that I am not coming back again?" asked
Keith.

"Well, you're a-sayin' good-by to everybody, same's if they were all
a-goin' to die. Folks don't do that if they're a-comin' back." He leaned
forward, and in the semi-darkness Keith was aware that he was
scrutinizing his face.

"No, I do not expect to come back--to teach school again; but I hope to
return some day to see my friends."

The boy straightened up.

"Well, I wants to go with you."

"You! Go with me?" Keith exclaimed. Then, for fear the boy might be
wounded, he said: "Why, Dave, I don't even know where I am going. I have
not the least idea in the world what I am going to do. I only know I am
going away, and I am going to succeed."

"That's right. That's all right," agreed the boy. "You're a-goin'
somewheres, and I want to go with you. You don't know where you're
a-goin', but you're a-goin'. You know all them outlandish countries like
you've been a-tellin' us about, and I don't know anything, but I want to
know, and I'm a-goin' with you. Leastways, I'm a-goin', and I'm a-goin'
with you if you'll let me."

Keith's reply was anything but reassuring. He gave good reasons against
Dave's carrying out his plan; but his tone was kind, and the youngster
took it for encouragement.

"I ain't much account, I know," he pleaded. "I ain't any account in the
_worl'_," he corrected himself, so that there could be no mistake about
the matter. "They say at home I used to be some account--some little
account--before I took to books--before I _sorter_ took to books," he
corrected again shamefacedly; "but since then I ain't been no manner of
account. But I think--I kinder think