"Adam," he said, "are you whistling?"

"My dear Kenny!" protested Adam. "It's the wind. I hear it myself."

Somewhat suspicious, for he fancied now he read in the invalid's
alertness a feline readiness to pounce, Kenny returned to the tale of
the harper who proved the right of Ireland to lead the world. This
time the insolent whistle, louder and a shade defiant, convinced him
that his listener's mood had changed. Adam was resenting his guest's
insistence upon the merits of his race by whistling "Yankee Doodle."

Kenny stopped and smiled, and the whistle rang out fiercely.

"A good old Irish tune, that, Adam," he said languidly. "It's 'All the
way to Galway!' Funny how it came to be known as Yankee Doodle."

In a fury of exasperation Adam propelled himself in his wheel-chair the
length of the room and back.

"You damned bragging Irishman!" he hissed. "I think you lie. You're
Irish and you hate to be outdone. But I'll look it up."

His spirit was unconquerable, his ingenuity persistent and amazing.
Often when the clash of wit was sharp he cackled in perverse delight.
But composure maddened him. Again and again, inwardly provoked to the
point of murder, Kenny threatened to break away from the goad of his
tongue. Always then Adam appealed to his habits of pity and
treacherously on the strength of it wheedled him into other tales of
folk lore merely to refute them. And always he blamed the brandy.
Kenny knew now that he lied. Drunk, the old man was stupid; sober, he
was satanic in his cunning.

There was one tale of a fairy mill that, in startling circumstances,
Kenny told without interruption. Fairies, in Ireland, said Kenny, had
ground the corn of mortals without pay until someone stole a bag of
meal that belonged to a widow. Then the fairies, shocked at the ways
of men, abandoned the fairy mill forever.

He braced himself for the usual shaft of insolence, in a mood for
battle. It did not come. Adam had fallen forward in his chair
unconscious. Kenny rang for Hughie and stared at the huddled figure in
the wheel-chair with eyes of new suspicion. Adam Craig, he remembered,
with a sharp unbridled instinct for adding two and two, was a miser and
he hated the children of his widowed sister. There could be a sinister
reason.

CHAPTER X

A NOTEBOOK

It seemed that Adam too could add his two and two. In his quieter
hours of pain, when every warmer instinct of his guest was uppermost,
he was