"Towhead!"

All the other children giggled. Keith blushed more deeply than ever, but
did not say a word or stir a limb. A moment later the teacher began to
cross-question him about his knowledge of letters and spelling, and he
found it much easier to answer her than to face the children. But, of
course, after a while he was quite at home among them without knowing
how it had happened.

That afternoon his mother came for him. The next morning he had to start
out alone under direct orders from the father, and alone he made his way
home again, his bosom swelling with a sense of wonderful independence.
Years passed before he learned that his mother had watched over him for
days before she was fully convinced of his ability to find the way
by himself.

The autumn passed. Winter and spring came and went. It was summer again.
The little school closed. Keith could read the head-lines at the tops of
the pages in the big Bible without help. But of the school where he had
learned it hardly a memory remained. It was as if the place had made no
impression whatsoever on his mind. And the children with whom he studied
and played nearly a whole year might as well have been dreams, forgotten
at the moment of waking--all but one of them.

Harald alone seemed a real, living thing, a part of Keith's own life,
but not a part of the school where the two met daily. He was a year
older than Keith, a little slow mentally, but rather unusually advanced
in other ways. His father was a merchant of some sort, with an office of
his own and half a dozen clerks at his command, and Harald had been