Keith had been home for lunch and was on the way back to the school. He was alone. Murray was in bed with some slight ailment. It was in January, a cold but brilliant day. The streets were covered with deep snow. Everything that usually moved on wheels was now on runners. As runners make no noise and the sound of the hoofs was deadened by the snow, every horse carried a bell, and some of them had a whole little chime. The bright sunlight on the white snow and the tinkling of all those bells made a stimulating combination, and people hurried along with smiling faces, although they had to rub their noses and cheeks frequently to keep them from freezing. Keith was never sensitive about his face, but his hands were buried deeply in his coat pockets. His schoolbooks were tied up in a leather thong and slung over his shoulder like a knapsack. At the Sluice he stopped and looked long at the people skating merrily on the rinks down on the ice of the lake between the Corn Harbour and the railway bridge. A number of boys near his own age were among the rest having a good time. Many of the boys brought their skates to school and never went home for lunch, but just ate a couple of sandwiches in order to spend as much as possible of the noonday pause on the ice. Keith had asked permission to do the same, but the refusal had been peremptory. The fact was that he was granted little or no chance to use his new skates. Once in a while he got leave, after begging long and hard, to run over to the rinks at the New Bridge Harbour, in the North End, for a brief while in the late afternoon. Most of the time even that scant leave was denied him. To his mother's general disinclination to let him out of sight was added her dread that he might fall into the water and get drowned. He promised by everything sacred that he would not leave the rink, which she ought to know was perfectly safe, but her morbid fears would not listen to reason. More and more he was beginning to give up asking even. The disappointment of a refusal was too bitter to be borne often. As he stood leaning against the bridge railings, his eyes strayed farther and farther along the surface of the lake, which lay frozen as far out as he could see. There were rinks on the other side of the railway bridge, too, and here and there he noticed isolated black figures gliding along the unswept spaces outside the rinks. Suddenly he caught sight of a large gathering of people very far out. They were moving slowly toward the shore, and evidently they were held together by some common purpose. He wondered what they could be doing out there, far beyond the last rink, but the distance was too great to give him any basis for speculation. After a while he had to leave in order not to be late. He had almost reached the school when he was overtaken by a boy from the English section of his own grade, about whom he knew nothing but that his name was Bergman. "Have you heard," cried Bergman when he was still several steps behind, although he and Keith had never exchanged a word before. Keith turned in surprise. "Three boys were drowned skating during the lunch hours," continued Bergman breathlessly. "Two were in my class--Hill and Samson, you know. The third, Dahlin, was in your own class." "Is Dahlin dead?" asked Keith blankly. The thing seemed impossible to him. He had been talking to Dahlin that very morning--a tall boy, slow, self-possessed, older than most of the other pupils, and advanced for his age in everything but studies. "He is," said Bergman with emphasis. "And so are the other two. They are dragging for the bodies now." So that was what I saw those people doing out there, Keith thought. "Little Moses was with them," Bergman ran on. "The Jew, you know. We've always thought him a coward. And he nearly went down, too, trying to save them." By that time they were separating at the door to Bergman's classroom. On entering his own class, Keith found it in a state of unexampled though subdued excitement. The boys were gathered in groups which constantly shifted membership. Every one spoke in a whisper. Reports and rumours of the most fantastic kind passed from group to group, giving rise to fierce discussions. Six boys had been drowned instead of three, some one asserted. In another minute they heard that no one had been lost. Most credence was given to a circumstantial report of the miraculous recovery of Dahlin after he had been fully fifteen minutes under water. His big sealskin cap, they said, had become stuck over his face as he went under, so that the water could not choke him. Keith was among the most excited for a while, running eagerly from group to group and telling what he had heard from Bergman, who evidently had the very latest news. Soon, however, his mood changed, and he retired quickly to his own seat. There he sat by himself, his elbows on his knees and his face resting in his hands. A stupor had descended on his mind. The whole thing seemed so incredible. He could not grasp it. Those boys, who had been right among them only a few hours ago, would never appear again. There would be a funeral, and then they would never be heard of again. Tears broke into his eyes. He choked with a vague sense of pity. Samson, he knew, was the only son of a poor widow. Hill's mother was very sick, some one had said. And Dahlin.... Keith instinctively raised his head to look at the place which Dahlin had occupied that very morning. What did it mean ...? At that moment the Rector entered, long overdue to give them an hour in Latin--an hour of which a goodly part already was gone. The boys dropped into their seats. A murmur of expectation passed through the class. Every eye was on the Rector's face which seemed to twitch in a peculiar fashion. "The school has suffered a terrible loss," he said at last, his voice sounding very hoarse. "There is only one thing we can do--work! Will primus please begin translating from the top of the twenty-second page, where we left off yesterday." The boys stared at him, but no one dared to speak. They knew there was no escape, and they tried to fix their attention on the books. Keith saw before him a blurred page full of dancing letters. Primus stumbled and blundered. He was followed by secundus and tertius. Keith had recovered a little by that time, and he knew they were making mistakes that ordinarily would have called forth a storm of reproof from the Rector. Now he paid no attention, but merely repeated: "Go on--go on!" At last the lesson came to an end, and then they were dismissed for the day. On his way home Keith's thoughts ran in a futile circle around the day's event. If they had never left the rink ... if they had been saved ... if the story about Dahlin could have been true.... Always his thoughts returned to the same point: the strangeness of the fact that those boys would never appear again. At no moment, however, did it occur to him that the same thing might have happened to himself--or might happen some time in the future. He was Keith Wellander, to whom such things never happened. He was nearly home when he suddenly stopped in the middle of East Long Street and said to himself: "Now I suppose I'll never get leave to go skating again."