"I often think these days of Kenny's wood-fire tales of the shrine of Black Gartan where St. Columba was born. Colomcille, old Kenny called him around the wood-fire, didn't he? Colomcille, Kenny said, having been in exile, knew the homesick pangs himself and therefore could give the good Irishmen who journeyed to his shrine strength to bear them. I'm not in exile but there are times when I should be journeyin' off, as Kenny says when the brogue is on him, to Black Gartan. The curse of the Celt! Kenny swears there's no homesickness in the world like an Irishman's passionate longing for home and kin. Not that I long for the studio. God forbid! Kenny's the symbol for it all. "I've had some black minutes of remorse. After all I had no earthly right to blaze out so about the shotgun. And you can't imagine how the statuette upset me. "Say hello to Kenny for me, won't you? Tell him I'm brown and lean already, and that I like the fortunes of the road." It hurt of course that the letter was Garry's. Nettled at first, Kenny had half a mind not to read it. Later, why it was Garry's, gave him a sense of power. Brian was homesick and repentant. And with the fire of his temper spent he was always manageable. Kenny cursed the miles between them. He read the letter again and the poetry of the open road filled his veins with the fire of inspiration. Tavern of Stars! Old Gaffer Moon, full-faced and silver! Tree-walls and Dame Wind a-sweeping! Why, the lad was a poet--a poet like his father. And the big-hearted kindness of him, thrashing the runaway into sense. Irish temper there! Kenny felt a passionate thrill of pride in his offspring. Yes, Brian was like his father, thank God, even to the Celtic curse of homesickness. "But to think of him," he marveled in a wave of tenderness, "living in a corncrib on seven cents a day!" Again and again he read between the lines, finding sanity and sense, compassion and humor. The inherited charm of Brian's personality filled him with intense delight. "Always," Kenny remembered, "he must be taking care of someone." It gave him a sharp pang of jealousy that that someone was a stranger. But the thrill of penance was in his blood. If Brian was big enough to see himself in the wrong, no less was Kennicott O'Neill, his unsuccessful father. And he had driven Brian forth upon the road. For that he must atone.