That night his father gave him a shining new silver coin without telling him why, and the boy couldn’t guess it at the time, though later he learned the reason from his mother.

A favourite method employed by the father to test and to develop his courage was to send him alone after dark on some errand into the cellar or up into the attic, and the boy went without protest, no matter how much he might dread the task at heart.  Even the servant girls felt reluctant about visiting the cellar at night, and the occasional discovery of a drunken man asleep in front of the cellar door made the danger far from imaginary.

Going down to the cellar, Keith was permitted to bring a candle along, but the danger of fire made this out of the question when the attic was his goal.  One night on his way up there, he discovered a white, fluttering shape by the square opening in the outer wall.  He stopped on the spot, and his heart almost stopped, too—­but only for a moment.  Driven by some necessity he could not explain to himself, he picked himself together and pushed on, only to find that the intimidating spectre consisted of some white clothing hung for drying on the iron rod of the shutter and kept moving by a high wind.  It was a lesson that went right home and stuck.

During that one moment of hesitation, the idea of a ghost tried to take form in his more or less paralysed consciousness.  He had read of ghosts, and overheard stories told by the servant girls in apparent good faith, and that whitish, almost luminous thing in front of him, stirring restlessly with a faint hissing sound, looked and acted the part of a ghost to perfection.  But the idea was rejected before it had taken clear shape and without any reasoning, instinctively, automatically.  His father always became scornful at the mere mention of ghosts, and that settled it.

When it was all over, and he was safe within the kitchen door once more, he told no one what had happened.  He thought that, in spite of his initial scare, he had acted decidedly well, and he was eager for approval, but he was kept from telling by an uneasy feeling that his father would laugh at him if he did.

XVI

The boy’s timidity took quite different forms.  One day the whole family was astir.  His parents had in some way obtained tickets to that evening’s performance at the Royal Opera.  As the custom of the place was to permit the holders of two adjoining seats to bring in a child with them, it was decided after much discussion that Keith might go along.  His mother tried to explain the nature and purpose of a theatrical performance, but what she said made no impression on the boy, who was more excited by the thought of accompanying his parents than by what he might hear or see.

Their seats were in a box in the third tier.  It was like being suspended halfway between the top and the bottom of a gigantic well.  The depth of that well affected the boy unpleasantly, while the strong light and the hum of talk confused him.  He clung closely to his mother with averted face.  Suddenly the light went out, and he heard his mother whisper: