his finger. As he did so, the shot rang out that waked the boy.

The next day Keith was permitted to examine the mark made by the bullet
in the wall. It was all very exciting. But the final result of that
incident was as unforeseen as the shot itself.

The whole affair evidently made a deep impression on Keith's father. He
ceased almost completely to go out by himself at night. In fact he
became so averse to leaving his home that it was hard to get him out
when the mother wanted him to go. And never again did Keith hear his
parents quarrel openly.

But now and then when his father came home from work, Keith would
notice that same slight thickness of speech which had forced itself on
his attention on two extraordinary occasions.

He was a man himself before he realized what that thickness signified in
his father's life.



VIII

"Oh, mamma, you mustn't!" cried Keith's mother one day when she came out
into the kitchen and found the boy munching a slice of white bread with
butter on it.

"He likes it so much," replied Granny easily.

"But you know what Carl has said," the mother rejoined rather