“Were you afraid to look,” the mother asked Keith on her return with the father from the cemetery.

“No, I just didn’t want to,” the boy replied emphatically.

“Why,” the mother asked, studying his face with the peculiar searching glance that sometimes provoked him and sometimes filled him with a desire to bury his head in her lap and weep.

“Why should I,” Keith rejoined.  “He was dead!”

VI

No sooner had the apologetic young man removed the effects of his departed relative than Keith wanted to take full possession of the parlour.  His mother checked his eagerness with the explanation that they might still want to rent it.  In the meantime he could use it freely, but he must remove all his playthings when he was through for the day.

“Why can’t I sleep on the big sofa in there,” he asked in a tone that he vainly tried to make ingratiating.

“Not yet,” said his mother evasively.  “You had better stay in here, I think.”

Once more the sense of being watched took hold of him unpleasantly, filling him with a mixture of fear and resentment.  And his wonder why they seemed to suspect him added to the mystery with which his mind was wrestling so hopelessly.

The constant access to the parlour was a great change for the better, however, and one of the first uses he made of it was to investigate his father’s little library with a thoroughness that until then had been out of the question.  It was a queer collection, embracing every form of literature from philosophy to fiction.  This catholicity did not mirror the father’s taste but resulted from his manner of acquiring the books.  Before obtaining the position he now held in the bank, he worked for a while in the office of one of the principal book printing establishments at Stockholm.  There he formed acquaintances which later enabled him to get one unbound set of sheets of every book issued from that press.  These he sent to a binder who put them into simple paper covers for a few oere per volume.  They always arrived in a large package just before Christmas, and one of the thorns in Keith’s flesh was the care with which his father kept all those new treasures hidden until the holiday season was past.  Then the books that had not been handed on to friends or relations as Christmas presents were given a permanent place on the shelves of the book case.  All of them, however, lacked printed covers and illustrations.

The young man whom every one spoke of as “poor dear Herr Stangenberg” had not been dead a week, when Keith one afternoon on his return from school found himself alone in the house with Granny.  His mother had gone to call on some friends, and the father would not come home from the bank for several hours.  Even the servant girl was away, which was a fact that not immaterially contributed to Keith’s sense of security.  Granny need not be taken into account.