mp with Kenny fuming at his heels, his
excitement chronic. Adventure had endlessly stalked Kenny for its own,
waylaid him at intervals when he passionately proclaimed his desire for
peace, and saddled Brian with the responsibilities of constant
guardianship.

Brian stubbornly put it all behind him. Kenny, frantic with tenderness
and resolution, could sweep him credulously back into bondage if he
kept to the siege. His promises were fluent always and alluring. Only
by the courage of utter separation could Brian make his longed for
emancipation a thing assured.

So he tramped the highway, lingering by fence and rail to talk with
men, living and learning. For the highway meant to him the passion of
life. Hope and sorrow traveled it day and night in homely hearts.

And often his thoughts harked wistfully back to the words of a modern
poet which Kenny with his usual skill had set to music:

"And often, often I'm longing still,
This gay and golden weather,
For my father's face by an Irish hill,
And he and I together."

In the gay and golden weather things were going badly with the
unsuccessful parent. For weeks now his life had been in ferment, his
moods as freakish as the wind. What little regularity his life had
known departed to that limbo that had claimed his peace of mind. That
he felt himself abnormally methodic lay entirely in the fact that he
watered the fern each day. It had for him a morbid fascination.
Incomprehensible forces were sapping his faith in himself and the
future; and viciously at war with them, he nursed his grievance against
Brian only to find that it was less robust than any grievance should
be. At any cost he wanted Brian back.

"He's taken care of me," remembered Kenny sadly, "since he was a bit of
a lad."

As ever, the thing withheld, Kenny ardently desired. That thing was
Brian's presence. Any Irishman, he decided fiercely, would understand
his terrified clinging to the things of the heart that belonged to him
by birth. It was part of his race and creed. He hated to be alone.
And Brian was all he had. How lightly he had prized that one
possession until it became a thing denied, Kenny, sentimentalizing his
need, forgot.

Studio gossip, having concerned itself with Brian's going, almost to
the disruption of the Holbein Club, took up in perturbed detail the
glaring problem of Kenny's tantrums. He was keeping everyone excited.

"Of course," mused Garry, "you c