Kenny choked back the tender untruth he would have liked to utter. For an instant he hated the little old fairy in the green cloak who had come forth from the hill in his dream. How easy for the dream-god to have made her--Joan! "Joan," he said wistfully, "you're sure you love me!" "Yes," said Joan. "There is no one in my life I love so well." "And it will last?" Disturbed she glanced at him, her eyes dark with rebuke. "Until the judgment day!" persisted Kenny. "Kenny," she said, "why do you speak so strangely. Love is love, isn't it? And if you who have known all things love me, how much more must I who have lived so much alone, love and cling to you?" He kissed her hair and pressed his cheek against it where the shadows were soft and golden. "I want you, heart of mine," he said steadily, "to love me in this wonderful way that I love you. There are ways and ways of loving." That, in her girlhood dream of love, she could not see. And Kenny was passionately glad that his words were a riddle. Then the horn came, clear and mellow, through the cold November air and Joan drew the hood of her cloak about her head. Kenny sighed. He clung to her hand as she started away. "Girleen," he said soberly, "the wind's cold. Must you ferry the river in winter, too?" "Save when there's ice," said Joan. "The bridge is three long miles away." From the barn doorway he watched the flutter of her cloak as she hurried down the path to the river. CHAPTER XXI THE SHADOW OF DEATH Kenny went back to the kitchen, hungry and depressed. To his fancy, as eager at times in its morbidity as in its lighter sparkle, the shadow of death seemed brooding over the farmhouse. This an hour later the weary little doctor confirmed. He had tired shadows around his eyes, that doctor; he seemed always bored to death at the proneness of mankind to ills and aches and babies; and his kind tired voice never lost its drawl no matter what the crisis. "It isn't just the spine trouble, Mr. O'Neill," he said. "With that alone he'd likely linger on for years. And it isn't the trouble here in his chest. That's chronic and unimportant. It's the brandy. He drinks a quart a night and he won't give it up." "I know." The doctor shook his head and pursed his lips. "I think he'll just slip away without regaining consciousness. Pulse is barely a flutter. Joan can tend him. She's done it before. Every now and then for a good many years he's had a bedfast spell. Poor child!" The doctor cleared his throat. "Well, Mr. O'Neill, such is life! I'll stop back to-night on my way home."