Kenny

CHAPTER XXV

CHECKMATE!

Daylight came bleak and cold as Kenny drove rapidly up the doctor's lane. The aggrieved mare had traveled. Through the farm window, green with potted begonias, Kenny could see the doctor already at his breakfast. A young colored girl was pouring out his coffee. The doctor himself opened the door.

"Well, Mr. O'Neill," he exclaimed, "who's sick? Not Joan, I hope?"

"No," said Kenny, following the doctor back to the table. "No, nobody sick."

"Sit down," invited the doctor, "I always figure you can talk as well sitting as standing and you can rest. Won't you have some breakfast?"

"I couldn't eat," said Kenny. "Doctor," he added hoarsely, "would it—be possible—for me—to speak to you—alone?"

The doctor nodded. In a life made up of emergencies as his was, nothing astonished him.

"Annie," he said kindly, "just tell Mrs. Cole not to hurry down to breakfast. And close the door."

Kenny took the will from his pocket and spread it on the table.

The doctor wearily fumbled for his glasses and put them on.

"Hum!" he said. "The old man's will, eh? I've been wondering about it. Well, he didn't leave much but the farm, did he? And it might have been better for Don and Joan if he'd taken it with him. Nobody around here would buy it. A barn of a place! And the land's full of stone."

"Ah!" said Kenny significantly. "But Adam Craig was a miser!"

"Pooh!" said the doctor with a sniff. "Who told you that?"

Kenny stared.

"I found it out for myself," he said stiffly. "Since then I have learned that it is common rumor in the village. And the old man, even when I—I spoke of it directly to him, never troubled to deny it."

"Shucks!" said the little doctor crossly. "He liked it. It saved his pride."

"Saved—his—pride!"

The doctor nodded.

"Mr. O'Neill," he said, "country folks stare less unkindly at a miser than at some other things. It hurt Adam, knowing his guilt, to see the old Craig home going to rack and ruin. Had a lot of money when his father died. A lot. And he wanted folks to think he still had it. But he didn't. Went through it, Mr. O'Neill, hitting the high spots. Came home a penniless wreck of a man, body and soul and pocketbook warped beyond recall. I was there when they settled up his estate. As a matter of fact my brother was his lawyer. And what he hadn't lost in gambling and dissipation he lost speculating in Wall Street. Oh, he never tried the miser stunt with me. He knew that I knew that he hadn't a cent."

"Not a cent!" echoed Kenny feebly. "Not a cent!" He cleared his throat. "Not—a cent."

"Not a cent," said the doctor cheerfully. "And barely a living from that farm."

"Dr. Cole," said Kenny steadily, "he may have lost his own money. Of that I know nothing. But what about his sister's?"

"Why," said the doctor at once, "she hadn't any. Old Craig senior left it all to Adam. She ran away, you know, and went on the stage. He never forgot it. 'Tisn't much of a story. She was a darned pretty girl, high-spirited and clever, and the old man was a devil like Adam. A scandal of that kind fussed us up pretty much in those days. I remember I went to see Cordelia once in some old-time play. She was wearing those old gowns that Joan, poor child, wears now. Always had a feeling after that that I was a part of the scandal. Mother," he added dryly, "felt so too."

The doctor shook his head lugubriously.

"She was a widow when she died," reminded Kenny.

"Yes."

"The money I mean must have come from her husband and she entrusted it to Adam for Joan and Donald."

"But my dear fellow," said the doctor kindly, "he hadn't any. He was an actor chap. Cordelia came home to the farm to die while Adam was in Europe. She hadn't a cent."

"Not a cent!" said Kenny again. "Not a cent!"

"Not a cent," repeated the mystified doctor.

"Oh, my God!" said Kenny. "And I've dug up the farm!"

It was the doctor's turn to stare.

"You dug up the farm!" he said blankly.

Sick with discouragement Kenny pointed to the will.

"Read it," he said bitterly. "Particularly the 'remainder, residue and situate' part."

The doctor read and he read slowly. Before he reached the clause in question Kenny was on his feet, mopping his forehead. He told of the fairy mill and the chair by the fire.

The doctor poured himself another cup of coffee and looked at Kenny with a shade of asperity. Fairies, it would seem, were a little out of his line.

"Adam had a good many spells like that," he said, "'specially when he was drinking hard. Off like a shot, hanging out of his chair. Mere coincidence. As for the night he staggered out to the sitting room, it is possible as you suggest that he did it in a fit of drunken superstition. But there wasn't any money on his conscience. Couldn't be for there wasn't any. If he feared at all to have his sister revisit her home—queer notion, that, Mr. O'Neill! You Irish run to notions!—it was simply because he hadn't given her kids a square deal and he knew it."

Again the doctor adjusted his glasses and went back to the will.

"Doctor," flung out Kenny desperately, "I myself have seen indisputable proof in that house that Adam Craig was a miser—even the way he handled money."

The doctor sighed and looked up. And he smiled his weary, understanding smile.

"What you saw, Mr. O'Neill," he said soberly, "was something very close to poverty. He was selfish and he had to have his brandy. His economy in every other way was horrible. Horrible! As for the way he handled money, as I said before, he wanted you to think he was a miser. It seems," added the doctor dryly as he went back to his reading, "that he was a grain too successful."

"He hated his sister," blurted Kenny. "Why would he hate her and revile her memory unless he knew he had wronged her? Why did he have black wakeful hours in bed and have to drink himself to sleep?"

"Adam," said the doctor with weary sarcasm, "fancied his sister had brought disgrace upon the grand old family name of Craig. She was a good girl and clever. But Adam believed in sacrifice and conventional virtue—for women. Most men do. And he knew the way folks feel up here about the stage. The world's queer, Mr. O'Neill. And Adam was just a little queerer than the rest of it. In a sense he had wronged her. God knows he was cruel enough to those two poor youngsters. As for his passion for drinking himself to sleep—well, when a man's had straight legs and plenty of health, such a fate as Adam's hits hard.

"He hated Joan and Donald," said Kenny. "Why?"

"He resented their drain upon his pocket-book. He hadn't enough left for them and brandy too. Though the Lord knows they never cost him much. Nellie Craig had them for a while after Cordelia died. Good old soul, Nellie. But her tongue hung in the middle and worked both ways like a bell-clapper. I always blamed her for the start of the miser yarn. Adam managed to get it over on her and that was enough."

He made a final effort to read the will and while Kenny sat in stony silence, choking back a creepy feeling of despair, reached the clause pertaining to the residue of Adam's wealth.

"Ah!" he said.

"Well?" choked Kenny. "Is there some damned commonplace explanation for that, too?"

The doctor tapped the paper with his stubby finger.

"And you," he marveled, "who knew so well his devilish cunning! That clause I think was his last cruel jest."

Kenny turned white.

"A trap!" he said.

"A trap," said the doctor. "And you've swallowed bait and trap and all."

"How he must have hated me?"

"On the contrary," said the little doctor warmly, "I think in his way he was fond of you. He counted the hours until nightfall, that I know."

"And I—" said Kenny with a sharp intake of his breath, "I killed him with that story of the chair."

"Oh, nonsense, nonsense!" said the doctor kindly. "Chair or no chair he would have died just the same. I saw it coming. And your presence there this summer freed him entirely from money worries. He even paid me."

"Yes," said Kenny, "my money helped him drink himself to death."

The doctor sighed.

"Oh, well," he said, "that too would have happened just the same."

Kenny brushed his hair back dazedly from his forehead and rose. He felt as if he had fallen from a great height and hit his head. It was numbly aquiver. As he picked up the will and put it in his pocket, Adam Craig, sinister and unassailable, seemed to mock him from the grave. His last trap! Almost Kenny could hear him chuckle: "Checkmate, Kenny, checkmate! And the game is won." How well he had known his opponent's excitable fancy!

"Doctor," asked Kenny drearily, "why were all the books in the farmhouse in Adam's room?"

"There," said the doctor, "I think he meant to be kind. Cordelia had had all sorts of schooling and so had he. I think by denying the youngsters books and too much knowledge, he thought to clip their wings at the start and keep them contented. In tune with the farm, I mean, and willing to stay. He'd seen enough of ruinous discontent when his sister and himself went out in the world and tried their wings. Just a fancy. I may be wrong. Well, Mr. O'Neill, I'm sorry. There's no mystery and no money—"

"No," said Kenny dully, "no mystery and no money." He moved toward the door with a curious trance-like feeling that this was still a part of his dream.

"Just a commonplace story of self," said the doctor, following him to the door, "with two ragged little kids the victims. Myself I think it's just as well, Mr. O'Neill, to say as little as possible about things of this sort. Tales up here grow. And fire that isn't fed goes out. It's bound to. I never had the heart myself to deny the old man's miser yarn. When I do talk, I try to say as little as possible and keep my two feet solidly on the ground."

He watched Kenny down the steps and into the buggy.

"Humph!" said the little doctor. "Thought he had his fingers on a regular swap-dollinger of a mystery, didn't he? To my thinking, the only mystery in the farmhouse is himself!"

And Kenny, climbing into the buggy in hot rebellion, felt that he had come decked out gorgeously in rainbow balloons. And the doctor, practical and unromantic, had pushed a weary finger through them, one by one, watching them collapse with his bored and kindly smile of understanding. Life after all, reflected Kenny irritably, was a matter of adjectives and any man was at the mercy of his biographer. He himself could have told that story of Adam and Cordelia Craig until no man could have called it commonplace and unromantic.

CHAPTER XXVI

AN INSPIRATION

Afterward Kenny thought that Nellie must have ambled into the doctor's barnyard and turned herself, for he had no memory of guiding her. A paralyzed conviction of another anti-climax had gripped him. He remembered turning into the road with a haunting sense of eyes upon him—Adam's eyes, piercing and bright with malevolent amusement. The chart! The hints! The will! The cunning of him! What would he tell Hughie and Hannah and Hetty? What would he tell Joan? What was there to tell save that he had put two and two together and made five, a romantic five lurid with melodrama?

And the brutal practice hour in Adam's room when he had told the truth! Kenny went sick and cold and shivered. How unwittingly he had flung the old man's poverty in his teeth! How at times it must have hurt! The memory made him shrink. And it hadn't been truth. He had battled for Joan with misinterpretation and cruelty; he had practiced the truth with the telling of untruth. And the proud old man who veiled his poverty with pretense, had listened, listened inscrutably and laughed, ready to thrust from the grave itself.

Ah! Fate was forever flinging down her gauntlet.

"To Kennicott O'Neill, my friend, my signet ring." His friend! In spite of the practice hour—his friend. Kenny's eyes smarted.

"Oh, Adam, Adam!" he said, sick at heart, "I beg your pardon."

The snow crunched steadily under Nellie's feet. Kenny stared sadly at the road ahead. Could he tell Joan what now he knew: that when the few bills were paid and the estate balanced, there would be no money left for the year of study?

Perhaps Joan would marry him now—at once—to-morrow! And they could leave the farm together. After all there was silver to his cloud. Kenny brightened.

A preposterous notion of hers, that unfitness. The memory of the sunset hour in the cabin came again to darken the silver lining of his cloud. Joan's arms, Joan's voice, Joan's eyes had pleaded; it would make her happier to wait and study and watch his world before she came to it, his wife.

Kenny sighed.

It would make her—happier. And the problem still was with him.

Kenny cursed the evil in the world that had forced men to convention. If only he could help her! If only—

A car was coming up behind him with a familiar noise of rattle. It was the doctor. Kenny sat up, alert, inspired, excited.

"Doctor," he called cheerfully, "is there a long distance telephone near?"

"A mile on. Road to the right," called the doctor, inwardly amazed at his visitor's mercurial disposition. "They call it Rink's Hotel. Not much of a place. Really a road house. But you'll find a telephone."

Kenny found the telephone at Rink's Hotel in a pantry near the barroom and closed the door to insure his privacy. It seemed an interminable interval of waiting, an interval of blankness filled with voices calling numbers on to further voices, before the Club Central answered. Again he waited, tapping with impatience on the table. When the voice came he wanted, it was far away and drowsy. Kenny looked at his watch. It was not yet eight o'clock.

"Garry," he said, "is that you?"

"Yes. Who's calling?"

"It's I—Kenny."

"Kenny!" Garry's astonished voice came clearly over the wire. "Kenny, where on earth did you go?" he demanded. "And what's the matter? Is anything wrong? What are you doing up in the middle of the night?"

Kenny snorted.

"Garry," he said, "I'm mailing to you now in a very few minutes my check for four thousand dollars—"

"Say it again."

"I said—I'm mailing to you—my check—for—four thousand—dollars."

"Wait a minute, Kenny. This wire must be out of order."

Kenny swore beneath his teeth.

"I said," he repeated with withering distinctness, "that I—am—mailing—to—you—my—check—for—four—thousand—dollars. And I want you to cash it in old bills. Get, that, Garry, please. Old bills."

"Old bills!" repeated Garry in a strangled voice. "For the love of Mike! … Old bills!"

"Garry! For God's sake, listen! This is absolute, unadulterated common sense. I want you to get that money in old bills, the older the better. Ragged if you can. And I want you to send it to me, Craig Farm, by registered package, special delivery."

"Are you in some mess or other? Because if you are I'll bring it."

"No, I can wait. I particularly don't want you to bring it. I can't explain now. I'll write you all the details. Then I want you to get a statement from the bank. Even with the four thousand gone, my balance ought to be at least a thousand dollars. See what they make it."

"Yes."

"Next I want you to call up Ann Marvin and ask her if she's still looking for another girl to share her studio with her … Ann Marvin."

"Peggy's with her."

"I know that. She said she wanted a third girl. If she does, tell her I'm bringing my ward—"

"Your—what!"

"My—ward—"

"Kenny," came in cold and scandalized tones from the other end, "have you been to bed at all?"

"If you make any pretense at all of being my friend," roared Kenny in a flash of temper, "will you do me the favor of assuming that I'm serious? I'm not drunk. I'm not insane. I've slept the night through. And I'm tired and terribly in earnest."

"You did say your ward."

"I did. Mr. Craig—the uncle, you remember, an invalid—died. And he's made me the guardian of his niece—"

"The poor boob." Garry's voice was sad and sincere.

"Garry! Are you or are you not my friend?"

"I am."

"Then listen. Next I want you to ask Max Kreiling for the name and address of the French woman he knows who teaches music—"

"Just a minute, Kenny, old man. Let me say this all after you. I am to cash your check for four thousand dollars in old bills. Ragged if possible. I am to send it registered and special delivery to Craig Farm. I am to call up Ann and tell her about your—your ward. And I'm to ask Max for the name of the French woman who teaches music."

"Right. Garry, has Brian been back?"

"No. John Whitaker may have heard from him. I don't know. I haven't seen him. Oh, by the way, Kenny, Joe Curtis was in here blazing up and down my studio. Said you promised to paint his wife's portrait. What'll I tell him?"

"Tell him," said Kenny, "to go to—No, never mind. I'll be needing to work. Tell him I'll be back in New York positively by the end of next week."

CHAPTER XXVII

MISER'S GOLD

He was passionately glad in the week that followed that Fate, prodigal in her gifts to him, had made him too an actor with a genius for convincing. For he had to go on digging dots, feigning wild excitement when his heart was cold within him. He hated spades. He hated dirt. He almost hated Hughie, who went from dot to dot upon the chart with unflagging zeal and system. Kenny himself dug anywhere at any time and moodily escaped when he could to write letters. He was getting his plans in line for departure.

He had settled the problem of the doctor, after an interval of bitter struggle, with a combination of fact and fancy. He said truthfully that the doctor had rejected all notions of buried money with his usual air of weariness. He added untruthfully—and with set teeth he challenged the Angel Gabriel to settle the tormenting problem in any other way—that the doctor had conceded the probability of Adam's burying money though he had had but a few thousand dollars at best to bury.

"That," said Hughie, "is enough to dig for!" And he went on with his digging.

The need was desperate and Kenny did his best. Of the doctor's story of Adam and Cordelia Craig he told enough. And he kept on talking miser's gold when he hated the name of it. His air of excitement, said Hughie who talked endlessly of dots, dug and dreamed them, kept them all upon their toes.

At nightfall of the third day when Kenny's hatred of dots was approaching a frenzy and a ballet of spades danced with horrible rhythm through his dreams, the package came from Garry. Kenny took it with a careless whistle and went slowly up the stairs.

The closing of his bedroom door transformed him. He found matches and a lamp and marveled at the erratic pounding of his heart. It was a muffled beat of triumph. Mad laughter, tender and joyous, lurked perilously in his throat. His feet would have pirouetted in gay abandon had he not, with much responsible feeling of control, forced himself to walk with dignity and calm. But his nervous flying fingers fumbled clumsily with string and paper and taxed his patience to the utmost.

The bills were incredibly old and ragged. Kenny stared at them with a low whistle of delight, blessing Garry. Moreover, Fate and Garry had chosen to solve a problem for him by packing the bills in a strong tin box. To unpack the money and dent the tin was the work of a moment. When he had darkened the shining surface with lamp-smoke and rubbed it clean with a handkerchief which he burned, the box, discolored and dented, had an inescapable look of age, like the ragged bills.

Kenny went through the dark hallway to Adam's room with cat-like tread, the searchlight that had been a part of his road equipment in his pocket, a bag of wood-ash, purloined the day before from Hannah's kitchen, and the battered box tucked unobtrusively beneath his coat. He locked himself in and drew a long, gasping breath of intense relief.

Though wind creaks startled him again and again as he made a pedestal of faded books for his searchlight and directed its glaring circle upon the blackened wall of the fireplace, no dreaded hand upon the knob disturbed him.

He worked noiselessly and with care, removing the lower bricks with his penknife.

Brick after brick he loosened, burrowing deep in the solid wall; then with infinite care and patience he walled the money in, filled the crevices with wood-ash and hid the remaining bricks in the chimney.

He went down to supper with an unusual air of calm, but his head was aching badly. Hughie, Joan said, was nearing the last dot. He was discouraged and Hannah was cross. Kenny toyed absently with the food upon his plate.

"Mavourneen," he said, "I'm wondering."

"Wondering what, Kenny?"

"If perhaps the chart isn't purposely misleading—"

"Like Uncle's hints to you?"

"Yes."

"I hadn't thought of it."

"Every clue we have found has sent us out of doors."

"Would he, I wonder, Kenny, hide the money in the house?"

"I'm wondering too."

"The sitting room!"

"There," admitted Kenny, "he was often alone."

"Kenny, shall we look to-night?"

Kenny had his moment of doubt.

"We'll ask Hughie," he said.

And so with Hannah scoffing but noticeably on ahead with the lamp, they climbed the stairs and tore the room to pieces—to no avail. In a final burst of inspiration Hughie dragged the faded carpet from its tacks and filled the room with dust. Sneezing and coughing, they faced each other in the melee with looks of blank discouragement. Even Kenny's inexhaustible energy and excitement seemed on the point of waning. He stared drearily at the fireplace.

"It's cold in here," he said, shivering.

"Yes," said Joan, "we should have built a fire."

"The fireplace!" cried Hughie hoarsely.

"It's too late now," said Kenny irritably. "I'm chilled through."

"No, no, Mr. O'Neill, I'm not meaning the fire. It's the one place we haven't looked."

"It won't hurt none to look, Mr. O'Neill," urged Hannah, who knew that Kenny's energy was subject to undependable ebb and now. "If Hughie goes out of here with that fireplace on his mind, he'll dream all night about it."

Kenny strode to the fireplace with Hughie at his heels and jerked impatiently at the mantel. It was sturdy and unyielding.

"I feared so," he said with a shrug.

Hughie seized the lamp.

"Hold the lamp, Mr. O'Neill," he begged, crouching. "I've got to look at them bricks. Careful, sir! You're tipping it."

Huddled in the glare of the lamp they stared in fascination at the smoky bricks.

"The bricks are loose!" exclaimed Hughie. "Look here!" He rattled one with his finger.

Kenny emitted a long low whistle of intense amazement.

"Hughie, where's your knife?" he flung out wildly. "I think we're on the trail!"

"The lamp's shaking!" warned Hannah. "Let me hold it."

"Oh, my God!" gasped Hughie with the dot fever flaring in his honest eyes. "That ain't mortar. It's only ashes. Look!"

Kenny frantically pulled out a brick and dropped it with a clatter. Another and another.

"Hold the lamp closer, Hannah!" directed Hughie, reaching within. "There's something here!"

Shaking violently he pulled forth a battered box and flung back the lid. It was stuffed to the brim with ragged money.

"Glory be to God!" cried Kenny and proceeded to pull the mantel down.

But he found no more.

"And to think of him burrowin' there in the bricks," marveled Hannah, "and him that weak a child could push him over."

"Ah!" said Kenny, "but his will was strong."

He counted the money with trembling fingers and a smile, curiously pleased and tender, and declared his belief that the doctor was right. The ragged hoarding—he shivered slightly with revulsion as he touched a tattered bill—represented the rest, residue and remainder of Adam's wealth wheresoever situate. And thanks to Hughie's inspiration the executor had found it.

"Four thousand dollars!" he announced at last in a voice of disappointment.

"And a lucky thing," said Hughie with an air of pride, "that I thought of the fireplace. For it might have laid there buried for the rest of time."

"Four thousand dollars!" gasped Hannah in a reverential voice. "Four thousand dollars! Well, Mr. O'Neill, it may not be much, as you seem to think after all the dots you and Hughie have been a-diggin', but I say it's a lot. It ought to buy the child all the frocks and teachers in New York."

"It will see her through the year," said Kenny.

Joan's eyes widened.

"It would see me through a decade!" she exclaimed.

Kenny smiled.

CHAPTER XXVIII

KENNY'S WARD

Peace came mercifully to Craig farm with the finding of Adam's money.

"Toby," Joan whispered to the cat, her soft cheek pressed against his fur, "I'm going away. And I can't believe it! I can't! I can't! I can't!"

"Toby will miss you," said Hannah. "And so will I. And so will Hughie and Hetty." She cleared her throat. "As for Mr. O'Neill, Toby won't be likely to miss him at all. He's stepped too many inches off his tail. Hughie thinks it must be paralyzed. I never saw Mr. O'Neill headin' for a new dot but what I knew Toby would be sure to stick his tail in the way and start a row."

Joan's face clouded.

"Oh, Hannah, if only I knew where Donald is!"

Hannah sighed.

"I wish you did, dear."

"It seems so dreadful with Uncle gone and everything changed. And Donald doesn't even know. Think, Hannah, I may pass him in the train."

"You may," said Hannah. "And then again you mayn't."

"What if he comes home? What if he writes? It seems that I just should be here."

"If he writes, I'll send the letter. And if he comes, Hughie can ride down and telegraph you word."

"It's snowing," exclaimed Joan at the kitchen window. "Harder and harder. Oh, Hannah, if it keeps up we shan't be able to go to Briston to-morrow for my suit."

"We'll go in the sleigh. Hughie spoke of it at breakfast."

"A brown suit," mused Joan with shining eyes. "A brown hat and furs! Think, Hannah! Furs! I do hope I shall look well in them."

"Mr. O'Neill said you would and he ought to know."

Joan laughed and blushed.

At twilight the next night she came home dressed warmly in furs and a suit the color of her eyes.

"She would wear it home, Mr. O'Neill," whispered Hannah on ahead. "And all, I think, to surprise you."

Often afterward Kenny remembered her there in the half twilight of the kitchen, joyously crying out his name. There had been a glimmer of shining tin, a halo of light from the tilted stove-lids, purple at the window panes and beyond snow and the distant tinkle of sleighbells in the barn. Hetty, he remembered, had lighted the kitchen lamp and gasped. A lovely child, proud and mischievous! Her youth startled him.

In a week she was ready and eager to go but the day of farewell found her clinging to Hannah in a panic.

When at last the old Craig carriage creaked slowly away down the lane with Hannah and Hetty waving from the farm-porch, the spirit of adventure flickered forlornly out and left her sobbing.

"Good-bye, Hannah dear!" she called, her eyes wet and wistful. "Good-bye, Hetty! And—and don't forget to write me all the news! And don't let Toby catch the birds!"

Hughie, blinking and upset, stared straight ahead at Nellie's ears.

Kenny sobered. How great his trust! Hannah, waving her apron back there and wiping her eyes, trusted him. And so did Hughie and Joan and even perhaps old Adam Craig; and Mr. Abbott whose gentle grilling he had endured with merely surface patience.

"Don't cry, Joan, please!" he begged, understanding how dear familiar things are apt to loom in the pain of separation. And then with her hand to his lips, he pledged himself to make her happiness the religion of his love. It was a pledge he was destined to keep inviolate.

Ordinarily to Kenny, impatient in intervals of discomfort and delay, the trip with its rural junctions and branch roads would have been interminable torture. But to-day, with Joan's eyes, wide, dark, intent, he chose to marvel with her.

They lunched at noon between trains in a little country inn. At seven, having come after much fragmentary travel into a comforting world of express trains and Pullmans, they dined in the train itself. Joan watched the flying landscape, dotted with snow and vanishing lights, smiled with the shining wonder of it all in her eyes, and could not eat. Kenny tried scolding and found her sorry, but she could not eat.

By eleven, when the train thundered into the terminal at Thirty-third Street, New York was wrapped in a scudding whirl of white dotted dizzily with lights. Already to Kenny, buoyant, excited and inclined to stride around in purposeless circles, the lonely farm was very far away. He was back again in his own world with the roar of the city in his ears—and Joan beside him. Ah! there he knew was the reason for his gladness. Joan was beside him.

The taxi he commandeered threaded its way south through a maze of lights, hurrying crowds and noisy, weaving traffic to a tenement in Greenwich Village. Joan, searching for the unknown sparkle of that Bohemian world she had been unable to envisage, stared at the unromantic basement doors ahead and clung to Kenny's hand.

"It's quite all right, mavourneen," he assured her mischievously. "Bohemia and poverty rub shoulders down here. It's picturesque. And my club is only five blocks east. Beyond this door there's a mysterious magic tunnel that runs straight through the house to Somebody's back-yard. And in the back-yard is a castle and in the castle studios and skylights, electricity and steam heat and wide, old-fashioned fireplaces. Once it was a tenement—just like this with fifty dirty people in it—but Ann with her magic wand has changed it all."

The basement door at which he had been ringing a prolonged Morse dot and dash announcement of identity clicked back and revealed a dimly lighted tunnel. At the end a flight of steps led up into a courtyard.

Kenny closed the outer door and blocked out the roar of the city. New York receded, its hum very far away. Their heels clanked loudly in the quiet.

As they climbed the steps and came out in the courtyard, Ann's windows, trimly curtained, twinkled pleasantly through the snow ahead.

A girl stood waiting in the doorway.

"Hello, Ann!" called Kenny joyously. "Is it you?"

"Hello, Kenny!" cried a pleasant contralto voice. "Hurry up. It's snowing like fury."

Kenny seized Joan's hand and raced her across the courtyard and up the steps. When she came to a halt, shy and breathless, she was standing by a crackling wood-fire in a room that seemed all coziness and color and soft light.

A tall girl with black hair, a clear skin and intelligent eyes was smiling at them both.

"Kenny," exclaimed Ann Marvin, "you Irish will-of-the-wisp! Where have you been? Everybody's talking about you. Joan, dear, shake the snow off your coat. You're beginning to melt."

Joan's eyes opened wide at the sound of her name. Ann laughed and pinched her flushed cheek.

"My dear," she said drolly, "I know more than your name. Kenny sent me a letter of measures, spiritual, mental and physical that would turn Bertillon green with envy. If ever you default with all the foolish hearts in New York I'll turn you over to the police. And you'll never escape."

Joan clung to her with a smile and a sigh of relief that made them both laugh.

"Ann," said Kenny in heartfelt gratitude, "you're a brick. I don't wonder Frank Barrington's head over heels in love with you. You'll not be mindin', Ann, dear, if I use your telephone?"

"Sure, no!" mimicked Ann broadly. "It's yonder in the den."

Kenny at the telephone called the Players' Club and with his lips set for battle, asked for John Whitaker, whose methodical habits of diversion for once in his life he blessed. When Whitaker's voice came, brief and somewhat bored, he forgot to say: "Hello."

"Whitaker," he demanded, "where's Brian? You must know by now."

"Kenny! Is that you?"

"Yes."

"Where on earth have you been?"

"Away. Where's Brian?"

"Where's Brian?" Whitaker snorted. "He ought to be in a lunatic asylum if you want my honest opinion. As to where he is, I told you before and I'm telling you again, I'm pledged to secrecy. I've even destroyed his address so I wouldn't be tempted—and my memory couldn't be worse. I'd like to say right now, however, that he's more of an O'Neill than I thought and I'm through with him."

"Phew!" whistled Kenny, much too astonished for battle. "What—what's up, John?"

"What's up?" barked Whitaker, his voice tinged with acid. "Just this: I handed the young fool a job that ten of the best newspaper men in New York were pursuing and he turned me down cold to stay all winter in some God-forsaken quarry where he's hacking up stone—"

"Hacking up stone!"

"Feels philanthropic. Grinds stone all day and at night helps a kid he's known six months cram for a college exam. Damon and Pythias stuff and I'm the goat. Pythias is seventeen by the way and wants to work his way through college."

"Mother of men!" said Kenny softly and thought of Joan's relief.

"Sounds very beautiful and lofty in a letter," went on Whitaker, angling for sympathy, "but of all the damned, high-falutin' lunacy I've ever seen in men, that's the limit."

He waited, confident in his expectation that Kenny would agree. The voice that came back fairly bristled with virtue and approval.

"You filled his head with notions about service, didn't you, Whitaker?" demanded Kenny indignantly. "What's your idea of service anyway that now when Brian's got a chance to be of absolute service to a kid who needs him, you kick up your hind-heels and howl your head off. Sort of a boomerang, isn't it? You came up to my studio, old man, and unloaded some facts. Let me unload one right now. I'm with Brian. I think he's a brick and a jewel for sense. And you can go to thunder!"

And Kenny, with a gasping gurgle in his receiver ear, smiled sweetly into the telephone and hung up with Whitaker roaring his name. He was amazed, delighted and triumphant, uppermost in his mind the thought of Joan's peace of mind. No further need to worry over Donald.

He kissed his finger-tips to Ann who appeared in the doorway.

"Your ward," she said, "is toasting her toes by the sitting-room fire. Kenny, she's a dear!"

"As sweet," said Kenny proudly, "as an Irish smile!"

CHAPTER XXIX

THE STUDIO AGAIN

The night-watchman at the Holbein Club greeted the prodigal with a broad smile of welcome.

"Wonder, I says, to the new bell-hop, I do wonder where Mr. O'Neill's got to. Everybody's been wonderin'. Mr. Rittenhouse most of all," he added, stopping the elevator at Kenny's floor. "I heard him grumblin' just last night in the elevator to Mr. Fahr. Mr. Fahr seemed to feel that you were off with the heathen somewhere paintin' 'em all up into pictures."

Kenny found the studio in a soulless state of order and blamed it instantly upon Garry. Fifteen minutes later, gorgeous in his frayed oriental bathrobe and his Persian slippers, he banged on the wall and evoked a muffled shout of greeting. As usual Garry might or might not be in bed. Kenny's time values had not altered.

Garry came at once in bathrobe and slippers.

"Lord, Kenny," he exclaimed warmly, "I'm glad you're back and sane. But I'm mad as a wet hen!"

"At me? My dear Garry!"

"You didn't write, you know, after you said you would. You never do—"

"I telegraphed instead."

"Your telegram," reminded Garry, "said 'O.K. Kenny.' And I'm chuck full of curiosity and questions. Sit down. Every chair in the studio's on a furlough."

"So I see."

"You left the studio in something of a mess. Sid tried to straighten it out and nearly had brain fever. Got to babbling and wringing his hands and we sent for Haggerty. She went on an order bust for two days."

"The old shrew! I suppose everything in the place is under something."

He found cigarettes and a chair and settled back with an air of lazy comfort.

Garry made no attempt to disguise his impatience.

"Kenny," he said, "you're the limit. If I'd ever telephoned into your slumber and asked you to find four thousand ragged dollars and mail them to me, and if I'd said I'd accidentally acquired a ward and was bringing her back with me, you wouldn't sit there in patience and wait for facts. Mind, old dear, I want the truth. It's likely to be a lot queerer than anything you can make up."

Kenny sighed—and told the truth. Garry listened in amazement.

"Kenny," he said slowly, "you've roamed off before and gotten yourself into some extraordinary messes and I honestly thought that summer in China had taught you a lesson. But this tale of Adam Craig and the miser money is the king-pin of them all. You've absolutely got to house-clean that instinct for melodrama out of existence. It's a peril; and furthermore expensive."

"Don't rub it in," said Kenny. "Whatever you can think to say, I've already told myself. Though," he added pensively, "it's queer, Garry. Wherever I go, things begin to thicken up before I've had a chance to be at fault in any way. And I'm so darned sick of anticlimaxes."

"You keep yourself keyed up to such a pitch that anything normal's got to be an anticlimax! Think of you digging dots when you knew there wasn't any money! Think of you with a ward! Oh, my Lord!" finished Garry with a gasp. "It's incredible. It—it really is."

Kenny flushed and gnawed nervously at his lips. Could he tell Garry of Samhain?

"And think of you," said Garry, his voice changing, "salting the old man's fireplace with your own money so that his niece could come down here and study French and music! You wonderful, soft-hearted Irish lunatic! I love you for it!"

Kenny rose at once and began to bluster around the studio, damning Haggerty. There was something disturbingly warm and honest in Garry's eyes. Then with a sudden gesture of impatience he came back and his troubled glance begged for understanding.

"Garry," he blurted, "there's one thing that probably we shan't be telling people for a year at least. And that is—that I love this girl better than my life and I'm going to marry her."

He waited with a fierce hurt challenge in his eyes for irreverence and incredulity and even perhaps good-natured jeers, but Garry, sensing something big and unfamiliar, held out his hand. Kenny wrung it in passionate relief.

"What's my balance?" he demanded.

"I'm sorry I forgot that, Kenny. It's eight hundred and forty odd dollars."

"As usual," bristled Kenny, "they're lying."

Garry refused to discuss the point.

"And Brian, another Irish lunatic!" he marveled, shaking his head. "Did Max write you the name of the French woman?"

"Yes. 'Twas a Madame Morny. I've written her. Garry, darlin', where on earth did you find that inspired collection of green rags?"

"The bank managed somehow."

"Weren't they curious?"

"They were until I said the commission came from you. After that nobody asked anything."

Kenny went with him to the door, dreading the emptiness of the studio. He was a little homesick for the farm.

The order was irresistibly reminiscent of Brian, of the notebook and the struggle that had driven him forth, a penitent, upon the road. The fern was dead, like the first fever of his penance. The thought upset him. Then something drew him to the door of Brian's room and he peered in and closed it with a bang.