But for Dr. Balsam, Keith sometimes thought that he must have died that
first winter, and, in fact, the young man did owe a great deal to the
tall, slab-sided man, whose clothes hung on him so loosely that he
appeared in the distance hardly more than a rack to support them. As he
came nearer he was a simple old countryman with a deeply graved face and
unkempt air. On nearer view still, you found the deep gray eyes both
shrewd and kindly; the mouth under its gray moustache had fine lines,
and at times a lurking smile, which yet had in it something grave.

To Dr. Balsam, Keith owed a great deal more than he himself knew at the
time. For it is only by looking back that Youth can gauge the steps by
which it has climbed.



CHAPTER VI

ALICE YORKE

It is said that in Brazil a small stream which rises under a bank in a
gentleman's garden, after flowing a little distance, encounters a rock
and divides into two branches, one of which flows northward and empties
into the Amazon, whilst the other, turning to the southward, pours its
waters into the Rio del Plata. A very small obstruction caused the
divergence and determined the course of those two streams. So it is
in life.

One afternoon in the early Spring, Gordon Keith was walking home from
school, his books under his arm, when, so to speak, he came on the stone