t an end. Kenny drove him
to the Finlake station.

"This car has been a godsend," he said.

"And Garry's wired me to keep it. He's going to the coast."

"When?"

"Thursday."

Kenny's eyes were moist and grateful.

"Ah, Frank, darlin', you're a jewel!"

"Piffle!" countered Frank. "Kenny, old dear, I think you hit a
chicken. If at any time," he added at the station, "you feel the need
of me, I want you to wire. He's bound to be nervous. And if his
convalescence seems slow and irksome, remember that the reaction of a
shock like that isn't merely physical."

Kenny wrung his hand in silence. He motored home, oppressed by the
bare line of hills and the noise of the quarry.

As usual the sight of Joan dispelled his gloom. Brian's pain was less.
He had fallen asleep of his own accord.

"He asked for you," she added.

"You told him Frank wouldn't let me in?"

"Yes."

"Hum. . . . Where's Don?"

"I sent him to the store."

Kenny darted away with an air of expectancy to the other shack, whence,
after an excited period of foraging, he emerged, carrying a bundle.
Frank, knowing him well enough to read his shining enthusiasm aright,
would have turned him back at Brian's door without a qualm. But Frank
was not at hand.

"You look like a kid sneaking home with a stray cat!" Brian told him
with a grin.

"What's in the bundle?"

"I've tried so many times to get in," admitted Kenny, "with Frank
nippin' me just as my hand was on the knob, that I'm feelin' a bit
surreptitious." He held up a tennis racket and a shotgun.

"And everything else," he boasted with an air of triumph, "that I took
to Simon."

"And the bill-file!" exclaimed Brian, staring at the litter on the
floor. "Jemima!"

"You remember it, Brian? You hated the sight of it. 'Tis the stiletto
I stuck in a chunk of wax--"

"Lord, yes! And you wrote the I.O.U.'s on anything from a playing card
to the end of a shirt."

"And never paid 'em until I had to," said Kenny with an unyielding air
of self-contempt. "Many the time you checked 'em off, Brian, and
rebuked me as you should. But that, by the Blessed Bell of Clare, is
all behind me."

He proudly exhibited the bizarre collection of scraps, initialed in
token of debt and reinitialed in token of payment.

"Brian--I--I--"

"Go ahead, old boy," said Brian, his eyes tender. "I can see you've
got a lot on your mind."

"I paid 'em--every one!"

"So I see."

"And never again wil