Keith entered.  The boy was lying on a big bed, his head resting against the frame of the little opening which went for a window, through which he was peeping wistfully out at the outside world from which he was to be shut off for so many weary weeks.  He returned Keith’s greeting in the half-surly way in which he had always received his advances since the day of the row; but when Keith sat down on the bed and began to talk to him cheerily of his daring in climbing where no one else had ventured to go, he thawed out, and presently, when Keith drifted on to other stories of daring, he began to be interested, and after a time grew almost friendly.

He was afraid they might have to cut his leg off.  His mother, who always took a gloomy view of things, had scared him by telling him she thought it might have to be done; but Keith was able to reassure him.  The Doctor had told him that, while the fracture was very bad, the leg would be saved.

“If he had not been as hard as a lightwood knot, that fall would have mashed him up,” said the Doctor.  This compliment Keith repeated, and it evidently pleased Dave.  The pale face relaxed into a smile.  Keith told him stories of other boys who had had similar accidents and had turned them to good account—­of Arkwright and Sir William Jones and Commodore Maury, all of whom had laid the foundation for their future fame when they were in bed with broken legs.

When Keith came away he left the boy comforted and cheered, and even the dismal woman at the door gave him a more civil parting than her greeting had been.

Many an afternoon during the boy’s convalescence Keith went over the Ridge to see him, taking him story-books, and reading to him until he was strong enough to read himself.  And when, weeks later, the lame boy was able to return to school, Keith had no firmer friend in all the Ridge region than Dave Dennison, and Dave had made a mental progress which, perhaps, he would not have made in as many months at school, for he had received an impulse to know and to be something more than he was.  He would show Phrony who he was.

It was fine to Gordon to feel that he was earning his own living.  He was already making his way in the world, and often from this first rung of the ladder the young teacher looked far up the shining steep to where Fame and Glory beckoned with their radiant hands.  He would be known.  He would build bridges that should eclipse Stevenson’s.  He would be like Warren Hastings, and buy back the home of his fathers and be a great gentleman.

The first pay that he received made him a capitalist.  He had no idea before of the joy of wealth.  He paid it to old Rawson.

“There is the first return for your investment,” he said.

“I don’ know about its bein’ the first return,” said the squire, slowly; “but an investment ain’t done till it’s all returned.”  His keen eyes were on Keith’s face.

“I know it,” said Keith, laughing.