they lived
unhappily ever after."

Joan laughed. She saw in his words merely a perverse dislike for
familiar endings and forgot it at once. The moonlit lake had aroused
in her a yearning tenderness for the brother off somewhere in what,
Kenny said, Brian called his Tavern of Stars.

"Oh, Kenny," she sighed, "I wish Donald would write!"

The wish jarred. Kenny frowned. How could he wish it too! And yet,
not wishing was disloyal, disloyal to Brian. Upset, he turned, hurt
and sulky. And presently as Joan, busy with thoughts of the truant
brother, continued unaware of the melancholy in his mood that never
failed to make its appeal to her tenderness, he began to hum.

Joan looked up.

"What a queer, wild tune!" she exclaimed. "What is it, Kenny? I've
never heard you sing it before."

"I never felt the need," said Kenny. "It's called the 'Twisting of the
Rope.' Long, long ago, girleen, a harper's gallantry to a pretty maid
angered her mother and she asked him to help her twist a straw rope.
And he did. And twisting he had to back away and over the threshold
and the mother slammed the door in his face. Faith, 'twas all to get
rid of him!"

It was impossible to miss the point. Joan's face went scarlet.

"Oh, Kenny!" she said. "You knew--surely you knew I couldn't mean
that."

It was a new delight to hear her say it.

"When Donald writes," reminded Kenny, "then I must go." And watching
the girl's troubled face, he wondered with a thrill of triumph if at
last the madness of the summer was upon her. Well, thank Heaven, he
was honest and honorable. He would stay until the madness waned.
Always he was fated to climb down out of the clouds first.

Ah! But what if Joan slipped back into sense and sanity first? The
possibility filled him with panic. What on earth would he do?

CHAPTER XV

IN WHICH CALIBAN SCORES

It was a prospect doomed to haunt him more and more as the summer which
had bade fail to be so full of peace, took on an indescribable
atmosphere of complication. Where could he go, he wondered
despairingly, that life would not instantly pour around him a
distracting whirlpool of commotion? Was he fated to rush through life
with his fingers clenched in his hair and his teeth set? Was he
doomed, as Garry had once said, to run forever in circles of excitement?

Stumbling and tired, Kenny tried to keep his feet unswervingly in the
path of truth, colorless and uninviting as it seem