over and over again, about
everything he had seen and done, about the place and the people, about
the food and the games he had played. Keith talked and talked, eagerly
and freely, but of the game played behind the big rock he never said
a word.

He was then not quite seven years old.

XII

That autumn and winter he was permitted to play a good deal with Johan,
and always in Johan's home. His mother had a bad spell of depression,
and while it made her fret and worry more than ever about Keith, as well
as about everything else, she was either too weak to resist his pleas,
or she felt his absence as a relief.

To his intense surprise, Keith found that Johan already knew all about
the new game, and that he was quite willing to play it. And for a couple
of years it became an important part of what they had in common. Chances
were not lacking, for Johan's mother was too wrapt up in her postils and
religious speculations to watch them closely, and there was always the
outhouse to which they could retire for privacy.

Their relationship was a peculiar one. Although the younger by a few
months and the smaller by several inches, Keith was the leader and the
aggressor. Johan remained passive--too passive, Keith often thought.

There was nothing of love in Keith's feelings toward Johan, nothing
emotional. The tenderness that was such a marked feature of his
character did not come into play at all. In fact, he rather looked down
on Johan, who frequently annoyed him by his dullness and his lack of
personal neatness. The truth of it was that he played with Johan merely
because he was the only other boy in sight, and in so far as that
particular game was concerned, Johan was simply an accessory to it in
same way as his tin soldiers and his toy fort.

In playing it, Keith had always a sense of seeking something else, but
he had not the slightest idea of what this something might be. It must
have some relation to girls, he felt vaguely, but beyond that vague
feeling he could not get. Clara remained forgotten.

Gradually Johan became more and more indifferent and reluctant as far as
that game was concerned. Dull as he was, he seemed to have some sort of
scruples that Keith couldn't understand. More and more Keith was thrown
back on himself. Once more a new set of interests began to take the
lion's share of his attention, although the game learned behind the big
rock would reassert its puzzling fascination from time to time.