. He was silent, moody, bitter. Holding himself aloof, yet never
giving utterance to any irritation, he seemed half-unconsciously to
resent the claims of love and friendship, as if they irked him. There
was a look in his eyes as if he measured us, weighed us, analysed us all
as strangers.

Yes, even Dorothy. I have seen her go to meet him with a flower in
her hand that she had plucked for him, and turn away with her lips
trembling, too proud to say a word, dropping the flower on the grass.
John Graham saw it, too. He waited till she was gone; then he picked up
the flower and kept it.

There was nothing to take offence at, nothing on which one could lay a
finger; only these singular alternations of mood which made Keene now
the most delightful of friends, now an intimate stranger in the circle.
The change was inexplicable. But certainly it seemed to have some
connection, as cause or consequence, with his long, lonely walks.

Once, when he was absent, we spoke of his remarkable fluctuations of
spirit.

The master labelled him. "He is an idealist, a dreamer. They are always
uncertain."

I blamed him. "He gives way too much to his moods. He lacks
self-control. He is in danger of spoiling a fine nature."

I looked at Dorothy. She defended him. "Why should he be always the
same? He is too great for that. His thoughts make him restless, and
sometimes he is tired. Surely you wouldn't have him act what he don't
feel. Why do you want him to do that?"

"I don't know," said Graham, with a short laugh. "None of us know. But
what we all want just now is music. Dorothy, will you sing a little for
us?"

So she sang "The Coulin," and "The Days o' the Kerry Dancin'," and "The
Hawthorn Tree," and "The Green Woods of Truigha," and "Flowers o' the
Forest," and "A la claire Fontaine," until the twilight was filled with
peace.

The boys came back to the school. The wheels of routine began to turn
again, slowly and with a little friction at first, then smoothly and
swiftly as if they had never stopped. Summer reddened into autumn;
autumn bronzed into fall. The maples and poplars were bare. The oaks
alone kept their rusted crimson glory, and the cloaks of spruce and
hemlock on the shoulders of the hills grew dark with wintry foliage.
Keene's transitions of mood became more frequent and more extreme. The
gulf of isolation that divided him from us when the black days came
seemed wider and more unfathomable. Dorothy and John Graham wer