flexible and kindly.

"Always," said Brian, "I am slated to be somebody's keeper."

Could he shirk? Had he shirked when he left the studio in anger? Had
he a right to live his life his own way? Had anybody? His common
sense endorsed his earlier rebellion. This was different.

"Whenever you tell me I can do a thing and hang around to see me do it,
I can seem to make myself do it somehow!"

The words echoed harshly in his ears; and at first Brian refused to
hear them. Then inexorably he faced his fact. He and he alone was the
spur to the boy's amazing energy. A year? Well, after all what was a
year?

He went back through the autumn moonlight with a sigh.

"Don," he said, "you're right. You couldn't swing it up here alone.
I'll stick and see you through it."

Don looked up, his face scarlet with emotion. Brian's hand was on his
shoulder. And Brian's eyes were half humorous, half quizzical and
wholly tender.

"No, no, Brian, no!" he choked. "I--I didn't mean that--"

"Of course you didn't," said Brian. "I thought that much of it out for
myself."

Don's head went down upon his hands with a sob.

That night Brian wrote to Whitaker.

CHAPTER XIX

SAMHAIN

To Kenny in poetic mood the seasons were druidic. There was May Eve
with its Bel fires when summer peeped over the hilltops at the cattle
driven through the sacred flames to protect them from disease. There
was Midsummer's Eve with more fires, and if St. Patrick in unpagan zeal
had chosen to kindle his fires in honor of St. John, he could. To
Kenny the festival was still druidic. There was Samhain or summer
ending, when the November wind speeded the waning season with a flurry
of dead leaves; and to Kenny, Samhain came and drove him forth in the
chill dusk to face another problem.

He had come to the farm in blossom time and he had stared ahead to
sanity--in September at the latest. Now with branches dark and bare
against the glorious sunsets that burned at night in the west long
after the valley was in shadow, even with talk in Hannah's kitchen of
early snow, his madness was if anything a trifle more acute. Even the
dreaded hours with Adam ceased to trouble him in the joy of his days.
There was peace here and, thanks to Mr. Adams, who had simplified his
relations with the bank, freedom from work and worry.

The November twilight, scintillant with stars, lay darkly ahead. He
forged through it in excitement. He who could forecas