"I think," said Hughie, "he wants to apologize. He wrote you a note this morning and tore it up. And when I put his brandy bottle on his chair to-night he flung it at my head."

"I'll go this once," said Kenny. "But, so help me Heaven, I'll never go again!"

He went dully up the stair, cursing the blossom storm. Its monotonous patter on the roof had inspired Adam Craig to his first plea of loneliness; it had left Kenny himself with a haunting memory of drab solitude, pain and melancholy that seeped with a dripping sound into his very marrow; and it had begun for him the singular thraldom, inspired by pity, that he could not bring himself to understand.

Hughie had left the door of Adam's room ajar. The invalid sat by the table in his wheelchair, a book upon his knees, likely one of the pirate tales in which he reveled. His face was drawn and haggard, his eyes closed. With the wine of his excitement gone, he seemed but a huddled heap of skin and bone. A death's-head! Kenny shuddered.

Unspeakable pity made him kind. The old man yonder was off his guard; he had pride and spirit that compelled respect.

Kenny softly closed the door and rapped.

"Come in!" said Adam Craig. Almost Kenny could see him chirking up into insolence and the pertness of a bird. It was precisely as he had expected. When the door swung back, Adam was erect in his wheel-chair, electric with challenge. His eyes were once more bright and sharp.

"Kenny," he demanded with asperity, "where have you been?"

Kenny glanced at the faded books stacked upon the bookshelves; and with the cabin uppermost in his mind he swung back dangerously to the hostile mood of the night before. Adam Craig was a miser, cruel and selfish. He had driven Joan and Donald to a refuge in the pines.

"I said," repeated Adam in a louder voice, "where have you been?"

"Picking wild flowers," said Kenny.

"You lie!" said Adam. "It's your way of telling me to mind my own business."

Kenny did not trouble to deny it.

"You've been sulking."

"Very well, then," said Kenny evenly, making use of his one weapon of composure, "let's concede that I've been sulking."

He was sorry instantly.

Infuriated, Adam brought his fist down upon the arm of his wheel-chair and, coughing, propelled himself up and down the room.

Kenny walked away to the window, sick with remorse. For the old man had coughed himself into gasping quiet. What could he do?

A wayward Irish tune, ludicrously fitting, danced into his head and made him smile.

"What shall I do with this silly old man?" whistled Kenny softly at the window.

"What's that?" demanded Adam suspiciously.

The insolence in his voice struck fire again. Kenny remembered his notebook and the hour of accounting. Never again would the forces Adam had revived sink into the quietude of his first days here at the farm.

"What's what?" he asked perversely.

"That asinine tune you're whistling?"

"It's a song," said Kenny innocently, "about a wild flower. And it was very wild. It had thorns."

"I think you lie," said Adam, glaring. "But as I have no womanish repertoire of songs to prove it, you can whistle it all you want and be d.a.m.ned to you."

Kenny at the window availed himself of the privilege.

"What's the name of it?" snapped Adam after a while, ruffled by his guest's persistence.

"'What shall I do with this silly old man?'" explained Kenny with a grin.

"You impudent liar!" cried the old man in a high, angry voice. "Do you ever tell the truth?"

"Almost never," said Kenny. "Do you?" And he went on with his whistling.

Adam ignored his impudence.

"Well, then," he said, "it's time you began. You're young enough, G.o.d knows. But it's not a youth of years. It's a superficial youth of spirit. And you're old enough to tell the truth."

"How shall I learn?"

"Practice!"

Kenny wheeled. Adam's careless dart had struck deep and sharp and it rankled.

"Very well, Adam," he said, "I'll practice on you."

Truth! Truth! he reflected pa.s.sionately at the window. Was the world mad about it? And what was the matter with himself? Why did the romantic freaks of his fancy always fill him now with vague worry?

"What," gasped Adam, staring, "did you say?"

"I said," flung out Kenny, "that I'd practice telling the truth and I'd practice on you. And by Heaven I will!"

He wiped his forehead with a shaky hand. The room was warm, the lamp flickering hotly in the summer breeze. He thought of Joan and the ferry. Did she scull the old, flat-bottomed punt back and forth, back and forth, when the winter wind was howling up the river? What did she wear when winter settled, sharp and bleak, upon the ridge? Kenny shivered. He pictured her vividly in furs, warm and rosy, and hated the lynx-like eyes of the miser in the wheel-chair who doled out grudging pennies for nothing but his brandy. There was much that he could say if he told the truth; much the old man must be told if later Joan with her secret tears was to be saved the brunt of his h.e.l.lish torment. He would force Adam Craig to stop the ferry. He would force him to buy furs. He would force him to endorse Mr. Abbott and his kindness, force him to grant Joan her books and the right to study, if she chose. Why in Heaven's name should she creep through rain and snow and shadows to the refuge in the pines?

He was dangerously excited with the fever of the old crusader in his veins. And then he thought of the trust in Joan's eyes when his tongue rambled, and went cold with shame. He must learn to tell the truth.

He would practice for his own sake--and for the sake of Joan.

With a sense of shock he realized that he had been very far away. Adam was choking and wheezing and gasping himself into weakness.

"For G.o.d's sake," exclaimed Kenny with a feeling of guilt, "what's the matter? Are you laughing or choking?"

"I'm laughing," said Adam, shaking with mirth. "Kenny, I'm just laughing."

"Well," said Kenny huffily, "laugh your head off if you want to. I mean what I say."

The old man chuckled.

"I'd be disappointed," he said, "if you didn't."

Kenny stared at him in intense disgust. A perverse old lunatic! He would like his new diversion less perhaps as time went on.

"I want you to forget," Adam said abruptly, "about last night. I was--jealous. I hate your health. I--hate your straight legs--Oh, My G.o.d!" he whispered, shuddering, and closed his eyes. When he opened them his smile was ghastly.