Little by little, however, Keith extracted various stories about those new friends of Johan’s, who lived in one of the neighbouring lanes and who had a big vacant attic at their disposal.  There quite a number of boys gathered daily, and Johan did his best to impress Keith with the desperate character of their doings.  Girls came to that meeting-place, too.  It was the principal thing, according to Johan—­the fact that made those exploits so deliriously reprehensible.  One day Johan was in an unusually communicative mood.

“Yesterday,” he related with great gusto, “Nils got hold of Ellen and kissed her.  And then they crawled into a big empty box when they thought we didn’t see them.  And there they stayed ever so long.  But Gustaf crawled up behind the box and peeped.  And he saw what they did, and then he told us.”

“What did they do,” asked Keith tensely, forgetting his usual reserve.

“Oh, you know,” replied Johan teasingly.

“I don’t,” said Keith stoutly, realizing that it was a dreadful admission of inferiority.  “And I want you to tell me.”

For a moment Johan hesitated.  Then he shot at Keith a single word—­a verb—­that Keith had heard in the lane and among the longshoremen on the Quay.  He knew that it was bad—­the worst one of its kind.  He knew also in a vague sort of way that it touched the very heart of the mystery he was trying to solve.  And yet it left him just as ignorant as before.

The bald use of that word by Johan stunned him for a moment.  Then his hot thirst for light brushed all other considerations aside, and he said almost pleadingly:  “Can’t you tell me all about it?”

“Oh, everybody knows,” said Johan, and his eyes began to wander shiftily as they always did when he found himself cornered.

“You don’t know yourself,” Keith taunted him, suddenly grown wise beyond his ordinary 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.