and his friendship for Murray and
a general sense of dissatisfaction with the life he was leading. It was
above all a sense of things missed.

Then he happened one afternoon, when his mother was out, to be delving
with more than customary audacity among the books in his father's book
case, which become more accessible through the death of their
gentle-looking tenant a short while before.

V

The cough of Herr Stangenberg had been growing worse and worse all
through the winter. He had to take to the bed more and more frequently.
There had been a terrible change in his appearance. Only the eyes and
his temper remained the same. He was always cheerful and hopeful. So he
remained when he had to stay in bed entirely and a doctor began to pay
him daily visits. Keith's mother did everything in her power to be of
help, and it seemed to put her own troubles and worries more in the
background.

"Consumption" was a word the parents often used in discussing the case
of poor Herr Stangenberg, and Keith gathered that it was something
dreadful and merciless, from which escape was impossible. His attitude
toward the whole matter was peculiar. He listened to what his parents
talked, but always in a spirit of utter indifference, as if what they
said could have no possible bearing on his own life.

One evening the servant girl--her name was Hilda at the time--brought
word that Herr Stangenberg wanted very badly to see Fru Wellander for a
few minutes.

"I think he knows at last that the end is near," Keith's mother said as
she rose to go into the parlour. "What am I going to say if he asks me?"

"Nothing," replied the father quietly. "Leave that to the doctor."

On her return, the mother sank down in her chair and began to grope for
a handkerchief. Keith saw that her eyes were lustrous with tears.

"What did he want?" asked the father with unusual anxiety.

"Well, if you tried for a month, you couldn't guess it," the mother
said, and as she spoke, a smile broke through her tears. "It is so sad
and so funny that.... He wants me to send for his tailor to measure him
for a new spring suit."

"Has he no idea ...?" The father checked himself with a glance at Keith.

"I know what you mean," said Keith calmly. Both parents looked at him in
surprise, but neither comment nor rebuke ensued.

"No," the mother went on after a while, "he says that he knows he will
be well and back at his office in two weeks. He actually laughed when