“God, but it was a close call for both of us!  And if it had happened to you, I would have followed you on the spot!”

“Carl, Carl!” cried the mother, letting Keith go and throwing her arms about her husband instead.  “What would have become of Keith?”

It was the first time the boy was taken into his parents’ confidence to some extent.  He was still too young to grasp all the implications, but the main facts were plain enough even to him.

The parlour was rented as usual, but the man occupying it was not at home.  The parents had gone in there together on some errand.  Seeing a small pistol hanging on the wall above the big sofa, the father took it down and began to play with it, never for a moment suspecting it of being loaded.

First he pointed it at himself, then at Keith’s mother.  Each time he was about to pull the trigger, and each time something seemed to hold him back.  Finally he turned the weapon toward the wall and pressed down with 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 impatiently.  “He’ll find out sooner or later if you disregard it, and then he’ll be furious.”

“So he will anyhow,” muttered Granny.

“Mamma!” protested the mother.  “It’s for the boy’s own good.  He should only eat hard bread except on Sundays and when we have company.  It is much better for his teeth.  And it makes him stronger too.  You want to be big and strong, don’t you Keith?”

“It’s a wonder his father lets him have anything at all to eat,” Granny put in before Keith had a chance to answer.

“You must not talk like that, mamma,” said the mother sharply.  “Least of all when the boy hears it.”  Then she turned to Keith again:  “Don’t you believe what Granny says.  Your father is merely thinking of what is good for you.  He loves you just as much as I do—­or your grandmother.  But he thinks we are spoiling you.  And he wants you to grow up and be a real man.  That’s why he hates to see you cry.”