XIII

His eagerness to read and his lack of reading matter had for some time
presented a growing problem. The books of his father--and there were
quite a number of them--were taboo for a double reason: first, because
they were not held safe for him to read, and, secondly, because his
father regarded them as his particularly private property that must not
be touched by any one else.

So he fell back on the old Bible and chance pickings. The stirring and
bloodcurdling stories in the Books of the Maccabees were his favourites.
He read them over and over, and he tried to dramatize that unbroken
record of battles with the help of his tin soldiers. But the reason he
could return to those stories so often was that he began studying them
while reading was still a partly mastered art, and half the time he was
more interested in the game of reading, so to speak, than in what
he read.

A year in the new school had made a great change. He read anything with
ease, and while he read rather slowly without ever skipping, his mind
took in what he read quickly and thoroughly so that going back over a
thing once perused became less and less attractive. He wanted new
material for his mind, and he wanted it in steadily increasing
quantities.

One day he made a great discovery. Books could be borrowed from other
people. One of his schoolmates came to school with a wonderful
illustrated copy of "Don Quixote" arranged for children. Keith went into
ecstasies over it. The mail-clad figure of the Knight of the Rueful
Countenance on the front cover was to him the beckoning guardian of a
world of wonders, the very existence of which he had never before
suspected. Tears came into his eyes at last as he stared hopelessly at
the object of his newly born desire. As a rule he blurted out any wish
he might have, but the thing was clearly too precious to ask as a gift
or acquire by bartering, and he had never heard of any other way of
getting it.

"Mercy," cried the other boy after having watched him for a while. "You
can take it home and read it, if you only promise to bring it back."

For a moment Keith was too overcome to speak. Then he became hysterical
with joy. The rest of the school day passed in a trance. He ran a good
part of the way home. Arrived there, he almost forgot to give his mother
and Granny the inevitable kiss of greeting. And he might even have
refused to be bothered by such a thing but for his fear of being put
under s