riemhild, he, the passionate hunter of big game on five continents,
became so nervous that nothing but fear of his father kept him from
burying his head in his mother's lap in order not to see any more. When,
at last, a shot rang out on the stage, even that fear could no longer
restrain him, and there was nothing for his mother to do but to escort
him out of the box into the corridor. There, under the care of a
friendly doorkeeper who treated him to candy out of a paper bag, he
stayed in perfect contentment until his parents were ready to go home.

"Oh, we must go again, Carl," he heard his mother cry in a tone of high
exultation.

"All right, you go," said the father with a yawn, Keith and I don't
care--do we, Keith?"

"No," Keith replied mechanically, but even as he spoke he became
conscious of a desire to share his mother's enthusiasm rather than his
father's indifference. If they would only promise not to shoot! ...

XVII

Three years he remained in the school of the Misses Ahlberg. Three times
fall and winter and spring were followed by that painfully delicious
period of almost unbroken daylight, when the very books seemed to lose
some of their magic, when even the air of the old lane became fraught
with some mystic urge, and when life within stone walls turned into an
unbearable burden.

He rose by degrees from mere spelling to the study of a foreign
language, German. He learned his Catechism by heart--or rather by rote,
for the time-worn phrases dropped from his lips at demand very much as
water runs down a mill sluice, without leaving any trace. In fact,
little of what he learned appeared to touch his real life at all. Nor
could he be made to take it very seriously, although, on the whole, he
was counted a good pupil.

He used schoolbooks, of course, but he was rarely caught reading one of
them. His mind seemed to master the offered knowledge by some mysterious
process of absorption of which he himself was never aware. Study in the
sense of close and painful application was quite foreign to him. Yet he
seemed capable of mastering anything that aroused his interest--or that
stirred his vanity, for he loved to shine. Unfortunately most of his
schoolmates were dull plodders who had not yet reached a stage where
plodding counted, and so his triumphs came easy and there was nothing to
spur him into serious effort.

At the end of the third year he had practically exhausted the
possibilities of the little