rdinary measure.

"Yes, I do," insisted Johan.

"Then tell--or I won't believe you."

"They did what your papa and mamma do nights," Johan shot back.

There was a long pause.

"They don't do anything," Keith said at last almost in a whisper,
"except talk."

"You bet they do," asserted Johan, sure now of having triumphed.

And Keith went home without asking any more questions.

IV

A queer restlessness seized him and left him no peace. He swung abruptly
from one extreme mood to another--from mad elation to paralyzing
depression. He had a baffling sense of things happening within himself
that were equally beyond control and explanation. He grew tired of
sitting on those plain benches at school, with no support for the back,
and still more tired of the Rector's incessant "sit up straight, boy."
Sometimes when he read at home, he could not keep his eyes fixed on the
book because his thoughts insisted on straying into all sorts of
irrelevant fields. But no matter in what direction they started,
circuitously they always found their way into the field of main
preoccupation.

Although shocked at the time by what Johan had told him, it did not
remain actively in his memory. On a few occasions he woke up during the
night with an impression of having heard his mother call his father's
name. When he raised his head from the pillow to listen, a breathless
stillness prevailed in the room. Soon he went back to sleep, and
afterwards he thought no more about it. Yet the very act of listening
seemed to inflame his mind in some way.

The game learned back of the big rock had never become quite forgotten.
Yet it had never meant very much to him, and during his association with
Murray he had thought less and less of it. Now it took new hold of him,
in a much more imperative way, as if it had got a new meaning and a new
lure. And it seemed to have some elusive but highly significant
connection with the mystery that always puzzled and fretted his
curiosity.

Once more he pressed Johan for an explanation of that reference to
Keith's parents.

"That's the way children are made," Johan finally announced with a mien
of having transmitted the ultimate wisdom of the ages.

Keith merely stared at him. That answer did not interest him at all. Of
course, he had long guessed that the arrival of children was a part of
the mystery, but it was a part that had ceased to concern him. What he
wished to know, must know, related to himse