there to
coolness. The air was tonic, deliriously wine-sweet and heady. Kenny
thought of honey and bees and clover and tramped and brooded.

The sun he hoped would presently abate its unromantic fervor. Meantime
he must think. Penance or the tribute of impatience? Which should it
be?

It remained for an abandoned corncrib to plunge him into his original
fever of inspiration and remorse. Brian had lived in a corncrib for
seven cents a day. Brian had ploughed and Brian had mended fences. He
had even dabbled in whitewash. No, by the powers that be! It was a
thing for penance after all. Always at the farmhouse the trail would
be waiting. What if he arrived there and the runaway had failed to
write? What would he do then?

Rags and blisters and a bit of corncrib penance for himself! It was
the only way. It would give his need of Brian invincible weight.

Kenny climbed a fence and entered the corncrib by a flight of rickety
steps. It was something of a wreck and unspeakably dusty. Sneezing
violently he sat down and ate his supper of bread and cheese with
profound discontent. Each tasted monotonously of the other. Instead
of two articles of diet he appeared to have something heterogeneously
one in flavor. The smell of cheese he hoped wouldn't attract rats and
remembered vaguely that a corncrib was architecturally immune from
rodents. Well, no rat with discrimination would select a corncrib
abode anyway. He'd fall through the floor slats.

Oppressed by the general air of slatty insecurity and the sight of a
basket of ancient cobs in one corner, Kenny wished passionately that he
hadn't always hated spiders, killed one with a shudder and pensively
watched the sunset through the corncrib bars. It made him think of
flamingoes in flight. One saw that best in India, flocks and flocks of
them in the sky like an exquisite flame of clouds. Ah, India! No, on
second thought he'd rather he in Iceland.

It sounded cooler.

When the moon etched silver bars upon the corncrib floor he went to
bed, regretting the preposterous fanlike spread of the corncrib walls.
Nothing walled should be smaller at the floor than it was at the top.
It gave one a hopeless feeling of constriction. The feeling colored
his dreams. Kenny found himself hazily adrift in an inquisitorial
corncrib made of bars of moon-plated silver. They pressed in upon him
ever tighter and tighter until with a mighty sweep of his arms he burst
them