He did practically all the talking, and he talked to them more as an older boy, a chum with somewhat wider experience, than as a teacher and class principal.  It made them feel their own importance rather heavily, but still more it made them conscious of an irreparable loss.  They knew that school would not be the same in the fall, when Dally no longer was with them.  In accordance with established custom, he would go back to the first grade and start piloting a new generation up to the point where they had just arrived.

The class would break up, too.  Some would have to stay behind.  One or two had gone as far as they could and would make a premature transfer from school to life.  Others were bound for other schools or other cities.  The rest would split in two and join with the corresponding parts of the parallel section to form two entirely new classes.  It gave them a foretaste of what it would mean to graduate into the gymnasium, and from there into the university.  And it filled their hearts with wistful pride.

The last hour was drawing to a close and everybody was talking at once, when Dally unexpectedly asked them to give him their full attention once more for few minutes.

“An act of justice remains to be performed,” he said.  “There is a boy among you who has not received all that he had justly deserved.  It was withheld from him by me for his own welfare.  The time has now come when he and you should know all about it.”

As he paused for a moment, the boys looked around at each other with something like consternation.  Their curiosity was intense.  He spoke with a tensity of feeling they had hardly ever noticed in him before, and not one of them had an inkling of what he was driving at.

“It means that some of you have received more than they deserved,” he resumed.  “That also should be known—­for the good of all.  It is a reflection on no one but myself, however, and I think you know me well enough by this time to be sure that I have been moved by no other consideration than the future good of the one most nearly concerned.”

Again he stopped, the class waiting breathlessly for him to go on.  At that moment Keith became aware that the teacher’s gaze rested firmly on him with an expression that sent the blood in a hot stream to his face.

“Wellander,” Dally began again, and in spite of the beating of his own heart, Keith noticed that the teacher’s voice trembled a little as he spoke.  “Will you do me the favour of rising a moment?  You are the boy I have in mind.”

Keith rose like an automaton.  His eyes clung to the lips of the teacher, and he seemed to expect from those lips some utterance that must make his whole future life different.  As often happened in moments of intensified emotion, he became strangely oblivious of all the little eddies and cross-currents of thoughts and feelings that made up his ordinary, every-day consciousness of himself.