There was a long pause.
"They don't do anything," Keith said at last almost in a whisper, "except talk."
"You bet they do," asserted Johan, sure now of having triumphed.
And Keith went home without asking any more questions.
IV
A queer restlessness seized him and left him no peace. He swung abruptly from one extreme mood to another--from mad elation to paralyzing depression. He had a baffling sense of things happening within himself that were equally beyond control and explanation. He grew tired of sitting on those plain benches at school, with no support for the back, and still more tired of the Rector's incessant "sit up straight, boy." Sometimes when he read at home, he could not keep his eyes fixed on the book because his thoughts insisted on straying into all sorts of irrelevant fields. But no matter in what direction they started, circuitously they always found their way into the field of main preoccupation.
Although shocked at the time by what Johan had told him, it did not remain actively in his memory. On a few occasions he woke up during the night with an impression of having heard his mother call his father's name. When he raised his head from the pillow to listen, a breathless stillness prevailed in the room. Soon he went back to sleep, and afterwards he thought no more about it. Yet the very act of listening seemed to inflame his mind in some way.
The game learned back of the big rock had never become quite forgotten. Yet it had never meant very much to him, and during his association with Murray he had thought less and less of it. Now it took new hold of him, in a much more imperative way, as if it had got a new meaning and a new lure. And it seemed to have some elusive but highly significant connection with the mystery that always puzzled and fretted his curiosity.
Once more he pressed Johan for an explanation of that reference to Keith's parents.