Chapter 28: The Way

Keith was still looking for “the way,” when October came, bringing crisp days and chilly winds. When not too cold, the boys still sat out of doors. When it was too cold, John McGuire did not appear at all on his back porch, and Keith did not have the courage to make a bold advance to the McGuire door and ask admittance. There came a day, however, when a cold east wind came up after they were well established in their porch chairs for the morning. They were on the Burton porch this time, and Keith suddenly determined to take the bull by the horns.

“Brrr! but it’s cold this morning,” he shivered blithely. “What say you? Let’s go in. Come on.” And without waiting for acquiescence, he caught John McGuire’s arm in his own and half pulled him to his feet. Before John McGuire knew then quite what was happening, he found himself in the house.

“No, no!—that is, I—I think I’d better be going home,” he stammered.

But Keith Burton did not seem even to hear.

“Say, just try your hand at this puzzle,” he was saying gayly. “I gave it up, and I’ll bet you’ll have to,” he finished, thrusting a pasteboard box into his visitor’s hands and nicely adjudging the distance a small table must be pushed in order to bring it conveniently in front of John McGuire’s chair.

The quick tightening of John McGuire’s lips and the proud lifting of his chin told that Keith’s challenge had been accepted even before the laconic answer came.

“Oh, you do, do you? Well, we’ll see whether I’ll have to give it up or not.”

John McGuire loved picture puzzles, as Keith Burton well knew.

It was easy after that. Keith took it so unhesitatingly for granted that they were to go indoors when it was cold that John McGuire found it difficult to object; and it was not long before the two boys were going back and forth between the two houses with almost as much ease as if their feet had been guided by the eye instead of by the tap of a slender stick.

John McGuire was learning a great deal from Keith these days, though it is doubtful if he realized it. It is doubtful, also, if he realized how constantly he was being made to talk of the war and of his experience in it. But Keith realized it. Keith was not looking for “the way” now. He believed he had found it; and there came a day when he deemed the time had come to try to carry it out.

They were in his own home living-room. It had been a wonderful story that John McGuire had told that day of a daring excursion into No Man’s Land, and what came of it. Upstairs in the studio Daniel Burton was sitting alone, as Keith knew. Keith drew a long breath and made the plunge. Springing to his feet he turned toward the door that led into the hall.

“McGuire, that was a bully story—a corking good story. I want dad to hear it. Wait, I’ll get him.” And he was out of the room with the door fast closed behind him before John McGuire could so much as draw a breath.

Upstairs, Daniel Burton, already in the secret, heard Keith’s eager summons and came at once. For some days he had been expecting just such an urgent call from Keith’s lips. He knew too much to delay. He was down the stairs and at Keith’s side in an incredibly short time. Then together they pushed open the door and entered the living-room.