about her head.

Kenny sighed. He clung to her hand as she started away.

"Girleen," he said soberly, "the wind's cold. Must you ferry the river
in winter, too?"

"Save when there's ice," said Joan. "The bridge is three long miles
away."

From the barn doorway he watched the flutter of her cloak as she
hurried down the path to the river.

CHAPTER XXI

THE SHADOW OF DEATH

Kenny went back to the kitchen, hungry and depressed. To his fancy, as
eager at times in its morbidity as in its lighter sparkle, the shadow
of death seemed brooding over the farmhouse. This an hour later the
weary little doctor confirmed. He had tired shadows around his eyes,
that doctor; he seemed always bored to death at the proneness of
mankind to ills and aches and babies; and his kind tired voice never
lost its drawl no matter what the crisis.

"It isn't just the spine trouble, Mr. O'Neill," he said. "With that
alone he'd likely linger on for years. And it isn't the trouble here
in his chest. That's chronic and unimportant. It's the brandy. He
drinks a quart a night and he won't give it up."

"I know."

The doctor shook his head and pursed his lips.

"I think he'll just slip away without regaining consciousness. Pulse
is barely a flutter. Joan can tend him. She's done it before. Every
now and then for a good many years he's had a bedfast spell. Poor
child!" The doctor cleared his throat. "Well, Mr. O'Neill, such is
life! I'll stop back to-night on my way home."

Distraught and rebellious, Kenny fought the girl's refusal to let
Hannah take her place. She hid the mended gown he hated under an apron
of Hannah's, slipped into his arms and out again with tears upon her
cheeks, and fled from his protestations with her hands upon her ears.
Kenny followed her to the door of Adam's sitting room, frantic with
distress. Verily, he thought, as the door closed gently in his face,
the quality of Joan's mercy was not strained. It came like Portia's
gentle rain from Heaven. It forgot and forgave and condoned. But the
thought of her, flowerlike in the shadow of death, was unendurable.

Anxious to help, Kenny sculled the old punt back and forth, whenever
the horn blew, until dusk. He had humbly pledged himself to curb a
tendency to speed and excitement and therefore ferried the river well
until a wind rose at twilight, clouds thickened overhead and a spatter
of rain blew into his face. Then his patience waned and h