and tenderness her presence brought him.

"Had I loved Uncle a great deal more--it isn't wrong for me to say that
now, Kenny?"

"It would be wrong, dear, if you made pretense of something you
couldn't feel."

"I--I meant that even then I could have mourned him better with my
heart than this--this dreadful dress. It would carry gloom wherever I
went. And that would be selfish."

He blessed her shy intelligence and kissed her again. Then the
carriage stopped at the farmhouse door and Kenny hurried up to his room
to find clothes less formal and depressing. Afterward he went ahead to
the cabin and built a fire.

The crackle of the wood was lively to his ears and cheerful. The room
grew, warm and homelike. When Joan came a little later, he was
whistling softly and making tea. He liked her dress. It was dark and
soft. He liked the lace fichu at her throat. And he liked the huge
old-fashioned cameo that fastened it.

"Hughie is hunting the key to the table-drawer," she said. "I told him
about the cabin. It doesn't matter now. Poor Uncle!" She blinked and
wiped her eyes. "He didn't mean to be cruel, Kenny. It was the brandy
and the pain. If Hughie finds the key, he wondered if you'd go over
Uncle's papers to-night. The will is there."

"The will!" said Kenny. He put wood on the fire in some excitement. A
miser's will!

Joan's eyes were tender.

"Kenny, how good you've been!"

"Nonsense!" he said brusquely.

"Hughie said so, too. And Hannah and Hetty. Someone had to think and
plan and you did it all so well. And, Kenny, I told Hannah, that I'm
going to marry you and she cried and kissed me and--and poured a
wash-bowl full of tea for Hughie to wash his hands in!"

"The heart of her!" said Kenny. "Come, girleen. The tea's ready. I
want to see you pour it."

He watched with his heart in his eyes while she poured his tea. There
was a sense of home in the cabin here and the crackle of the fire was
the music of comfort. Kenny drank a little of his tea and roved off to
the window to light a cigarette.

Beyond the November monotone of trees blazed the red of a sunset. A
winter sunset! The fall was over.

"Joan!" he called softly. "Come, jewel machree, the Gray Man is
stealing through the pines."

She came at once and slipped into the circle of his arm. Kenny held
her tight and found his courage. He was restless, it seemed, and after
months of irresponsibility, the thought of work w