ack.

But in the end the old man tired him out; and the practice of truth
became a boomerang.

Adam Craig smoothly demanded reciprocal privileges. Once more he told
Kenny the truth about himself and drove the tormented Irishman again
and again to his notebook. It had for him a morbid fascination. No
matter how resolute the disdain with which he began to read it, he
finished with his color high and his eyes incredulous and indignant.
The barbs failed to lose their sting. They sank deeper and deeper. In
a terror of defense Kenny returned to the fray with added vim. But
Adam had a deftness with his barbs that his opponent lacked.
Compassion drove the younger man to restraint. And Adam did not
scruple to hide behind the bulwark of his own debility.

Night after night, mutinous at the glaring fact that in this singular
battle of truth, Adam Craig was winning, Kenny rushed out into the
peace and darkness of the night to seek Joan. It was inevitable that
he should see in the wistaria ladder the means to starlit hours of
delight. It was inevitable that Joan, to whom the vine was no more
than an old, familiar stairway, would climb down to him with that shy
oblivion of convention that was as much a part of her as her
will-of-the-wisp charm.

They roamed in the dark silver of the star-light to the cabin in the
pines and the hours that Joan had spent with Mr. Abbott or the books
she loved, fell tinkling now with new melody into the lap of time. In
the rude room, bright with lamplight and the trophies of childhood, the
girl listened tirelessly to a musical Irish voice that read to her with
brogue and tenderness enough to insure her interest in the reader no
less than in his task. Kenny blessed the village congregation that had
sent Mr. Abbott forth upon his needed month of recreation.

When the nights were cool enough, they built a fire of pine cones in
the cabin stove and made tea and Kenny talked of Brian to ease his
troubled heart. Joan listened wide-eyed to tales of the son Kenny said
was all things in one.

"And you quarreled!" said Joan.

"Yes," said Kenny.

"So did Donald and I. How queer that is! Was it your fault, Kenny?
Or was it Brian's?"

"It was my fault," said Kenny and lost his color. "But I know now that
it wasn't the quarrel then that counted. It was the things that had
gone before."

"How much you love him!" said Joan gently.

"Yes," said Kenny. "In this world of hideous complexities