The insolence in his voice struck fire again. Kenny remembered his notebook and the hour of accounting. Never again would the forces Adam had revived sink into the quietude of his first days here at the farm. "What's what?" he asked perversely. "That asinine tune you're whistling?" "It's a song," said Kenny innocently, "about a wild flower. And it was very wild. It had thorns." "I think you lie," said Adam, glaring. "But as I have no womanish repertoire of songs to prove it, you can whistle it all you want and be damned to you." Kenny at the window availed himself of the privilege. "What's the name of it?" snapped Adam after a while, ruffled by his guest's persistence. "'What shall I do with this silly old man?'" explained Kenny with a grin. "You impudent liar!" cried the old man in a high, angry voice. "Do you ever tell the truth?" "Almost never," said Kenny. "Do you?" And he went on with his whistling. Adam ignored his impudence. "Well, then," he said, "it's time you began. You're young enough, God knows. But it's not a youth of years. It's a superficial youth of spirit. And you're old enough to tell the truth." "How shall I learn?" "Practice!" Kenny wheeled. Adam's careless dart had struck deep and sharp and it rankled. "Very well, Adam," he said, "I'll practice on you." Truth! Truth! he reflected passionately at the window. Was the world mad about it? And what was the matter with himself? Why did the romantic freaks of his fancy always fill him now with vague worry? "What," gasped Adam, staring, "did you say?" "I said," flung out Kenny, "that I'd practice telling the truth and I'd practice on you. And by Heaven I will!" He wiped his forehead with a shaky hand. The room was warm, the lamp flickering hotly in the summer breeze. He thought of Joan and the ferry. Did she scull the old, flat-bottomed punt back and forth, back and forth, when the winter wind was howling up the river? What did she wear when winter settled, sharp and bleak, upon the ridge? Kenny shivered. He pictured her vividly in furs, warm and rosy, and hated the lynx-like eyes of the miser in the wheel-chair who doled out grudging pennies for nothing but his brandy. There was much that he could say if he told the truth; much the old man must be told if later Joan with her secret tears was to be saved the brunt of his hellish torment. He would force Adam Craig to stop the ferry. He would force him to buy furs. He would force him to endorse Mr. Abbott and his kindness, force him to grant Joan her books and the right to study, if she chose. Why in Heaven's name should she creep through rain and snow and shadows to the refuge in the pines? He was dangerously excited with the fever of the old crusader in his veins. And then he thought of the trust in Joan's eyes when his tongue rambled, and went cold with shame. He must learn to tell the truth. He would practice for his own sake--and for the sake of Joan.