Exhausted by blind fits of rage, racking spells of coughing and more brandy than usual, the invalid's weakness became pitifully apparent. He seemed now but a shaking shadow, gray and gaunt. Even the doctor, who accepted him with fatalistic calm, confessed alarm. And Kenny, with his teeth set and his fingers clenched in his hair, faced another problem. He was to blame and he alone! What in the literal name of mercy was he to do? There was one alternative left and one only. Either he must meet the old man's hunger for battle with a show of temper, the blacker the better, or leave the farm for good. But even with his thraldom heavy on his soul the prospect of leaving Joan filled him with pain and panic. There remained then but the show of temper in which Adam would be sure to thrive. So Kenny set himself to his freak of mercy. Thereafter, when the need arose, he walked the floor under the piercing battery of Adam's eyes, blazing forth a fury that, in the circumstances, with his sense of the ridiculous upper-most, could not be real. He raved and swore when he wanted to collapse in a chair and rock with nervous laughter. Keen, alert, intensely delighted, Adam began to thrive. Chuckling he slipped back to his normal state of debility. Finding in the stress of his victim's tempestuous surrender that he forgot the megaphone, he perversely began again to have trouble with his ears. Kenny and his megaphone returned to the fray. Thus September came, warm and golden. Haze, soft and indistinct lay in the valley and on the hills. Summer lingered in the garden but on the ridge the nights were cool and in the swamplands, Hughie said, already the maples were coloring with a hint of colder weather. Here and there on birch and poplar fluttered a yellowing leaf. And Donald had not written. Kenny, as the days slipped by, faced a new and tragic problem. October was at hand. Work beckoned with urgent hand. If he did not go soon somebody would have to balance up his check book for him and tell him how long he could live without working. Brian, dear lad, had been a jewel at figures. But how _could_ he work with the thought of the winter wind and Joan tormenting him? And the snow-bound cabin in the pines? And the ferry and the ladder of icy vine? And Adam Craig? He could not, would not go! And where in the name of all lunatics was Brian? Life in the studio without him would be impossible. What did he intend to do? Could he, Kenny, settle down to work with the problem of his penitential quest for his son still unsettled? And why in the name of the Sacred Question-mark, was his life a string of questions! In the end he fled from Adam's tongue. So he told himself. In reality panic plunged him into action. His summer was ending. His madness was not. And for that alarming fact he blamed Brian. "I was worried," he remembered irritably, "and just in the mood to make a colossal fool of myself. And I have!"