A quick change took place in the boy’s heart.  He ran into the living-room and put his arm about his mother who was still lying in the window.

“Don’t worry, mamma,” he whispered to her.  “I’ll take care of you.”

There was something in his voice that brought the mother to herself.  She closed the window and took him in her arms and kissed him as she had never kissed him before, he thought.

“It was the spire that fell just now,” she said, “and if there is any danger, your father will be here in a minute.”

Almost as she spoke, the glare outside began to die down, though the sky remained red and threatening until daybreak.

Then they had coffee, Keith being allowed an extra dose in his milk.  And soon afterwards the father returned to tell the story of the fire and inform them that all danger was over as far as they were concerned.

For days afterwards the experiences of that night occupied Keith’s mind.  The joy of excitement was probably uppermost in spite of all other considerations, Beneath it was a vivid conception of the horrors of fire that remained a live thing in his mind until he was well on in years, sometimes waking him out of his sleep at night and setting his heart palpitating wildly at the mere idea of danger.  Lastly, however, there was left from that momentous night a new attitude toward the mother that implied a direct criticism—­the first one that had ever broken into clear consciousness.  It did not make him love her less, but it changed the character of his love in some subtle way.  The father, on the other hand, had gained by that night.  There was something heroic about the quiet way in which he walked off to take care of the bank, pushing all other considerations aside until that duty had been filled.

XV

Gradually Keith learned to know the old house from top to bottom.  The garret and the cellar remained of excitement for a long time.  The rest of it offered little to hold the attention or feed the imagination.

It covered three sides of a rectangle, with the courtyard in the centre.  The wall of the adjoining house; formed the fourth side—­a sheer cliff of plastered brick that towered two whole stories higher, its dreary expanse unbroken by a single window.  Along the foot of it ran a long low structure with innumerable doors opening on the courtyard.  Thither men, women and children had to descend regardless of weather or hour or season, and every visitor could be watched from the windows opening on the yard.

The rear part of the house constituted practically a building by itself, with a stairway of its own, and the people living there seemed to form a world apart, with which Keith never became very well acquainted.  But on the ground-floor of that part was the laundry, used in turn by every household in the entire house and regarded by the boy as a far-off, adventurous place until he had been allowed to visit it a couple of times.