raging the
unfortunate old chap to duck and misinterpret his obvious intention to
save him.

But Joan had understood. That was the chief essential. Always Joan was
there upon the horizon of his day. Whatever he thought, whatever he did,
was colored by a passionate desire for the girl's approval. Her pleasure
became his delight; her smile his inspiration. In that, he told himself,
pleased to interpret all things here in the sylvan heart of solitude in
the terms of romance and mystery, he was like the chivalrous warrior of
old who found his true happiness in gallantly serving a beautiful maid.
Joan was surely such a type as chivalry conceived. She filled his Celtic
ideal and aroused all his gladness as a woman should. And she was as shy
and beautiful as a wild flower and as unspoiled. He blessed the old
gowns that quaintly framed her loveliness anew from day to day. But they
had been his undoing. He felt that he might have kept his head a little
longer but for the blaze of the gold brocade in the last light of the sun.

Laughter made her lovely. Ah, there Brian had been right. But then, he
reflected sadly, Brian was always right. That, he could surely concede,
when Fate had put an end to his quest and doomed him to linger here in
the home of a miser, waiting, waiting, yes, waiting in impatience for
word of his son. Well, perhaps he was not impatient, but at least he was
waiting. And Brian had found in Joan's face the vigor of sweetness, not
the kind that cloys. Kenny liked the words.

It was inevitable, with songs for everything, that he would have songs,
like the tenderer tones of his voice, that he kept for Joan alone, songs
that came softly to his lips when Nature stirred his fancy and Joan was
at his side in an old-time gown.

A lone pine, a wild geranium, a lark or Joan's garden where the
heliotrope grew; they were sparks to a fire of inspiration that came
forth in song.

There was one song he sang most often.

"What is it, Kenny?" Joan asked one sunset when Kenny on the farm porch
was finding the subtleties of color for her in the darkening valley below
them and the western sky above the hills.

"What's what, Arbutus, dear?" he asked with guile.

The "dear" didn't bother her. It was frequently "Hannah, dear!" and
"Hetty, dear!" and Hughie was often "Hughie, darlin'."

"Why," asked Joan, "do you call me Arbutus?"

"Because you're like one," he said gently.

"And what was the song?"

"'