hands of Adam Craig; and the need
of choice had driven him to prayer.

Kenny, glad at last to find his tongue, warmly commended his decision.

Joan blew out the light and locked the door.

"How did you find the cabin, Kenny?" she asked wonderingly. "It's off
so in the wilder part of the forest. No one comes this way."

Kenny told fluently of walking toward a star.

It was like him. Joan smiled.

But the faith in her eyes upset him. He wanted to be truthful. Ah! if
only Fate would let him!

"And I startled you!" marveled Mr. Abbott.

"Yes," said Kenny.

He walked back through the silence of the pines with remorse in his
heart, paying little heed to Mr. Abbott's talk of vacation. The
wistaria ladder, the cloister of pines, the lonely cabin where Joan
spent truant hours of peace, were to him things of infinite pathos.
And like the day in the garret, yesterday seemed aeons back. He
wondered why, conscious of a subtle, unforgettable sense of change in
himself. Something mysteriously had altered.

The memory of the pain and horror in his heart, he dismissed with a
frown. As Adam said, he never dwelt upon the things that failed to
please him. The pain was past. The peace of the present lay in his
heart. It had even crowded out the memory of Adam and the notebook.

He was glad when Mr. Abbott said good night and took a footpath to the
west. Well, it had been a mystery this time that he hadn't wanted to
keep. But why, Oh, why, he wondered a little sadly, must all his
mysteries end in anticlimax? Absurd, the little man in his frock coat
trotting out of the cabin door!

"Joan, Joan!" he pleaded. "Why didn't you tell me? Am I then not your
friend?"

"I'm sorry, Kenny." She laid her hand wistfully upon his arm. "Mr.
Abbott asked me not to tell you."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"You go there often?"

"Yes, at night. I sew there and read and study. To Donald and me it
was always a little like a home. I used to patch his clothes there.
He hated them so. You're not hurt?"

"Not--now."

"I'm glad."

At the wistaria ladder Kenny sighed.

"Must you?" he asked. "I mean, Joan, can't you steal in by the door?"

"It's better not," said Joan, one hand already on the vine. "Hughie
would scold if he knew. For the wood is lonely. And he would talk so
much of rain and snow. Now I can come and go as I please."

She caught her cloak up and fastened it to insure the freedom of both
her hands.