But there were some things that even the little doctor could not say.

“Still there, Mr. O’Neill?” he asked a little later.

“Yes.  Where is Brian now?”

“In a quarry shack on what we call up here the Finlake mountain.”

“Finlake mountain!”

“Yes, barely eighteen miles across the valley from the farm.  They couldn’t find a doctor.  Carson is nearer but he was out.  Has a widely scattered farm practice like my own and Don, frantic with terror, telephoned to me.  We’ve done everything possible for him, Mr. O’Neill, but his pulse is pretty feeble and it’s difficult to rouse him.  Sensibility of course is blunted.  Bound to be—­”

“I will be there,” said Kenny, “as soon—­as soon as it is possible.  There are but three north-bound trains at Briston?”

“Morning—­eight-ten.  Noon, one-twenty-nine and night, seven-fifteen.  But don’t get off at Briston, Mr. O’Neill.  Finlake, fifteen miles on, is nearer—­”

“I can not possibly make the morning train.  The changes make the trip long.  Twelve hours. . . .  God!”

“I myself will meet you at Finlake.  It’s three miles farther to the quarry.  If you are not on the noon train I will meet the night—­”

“I—­I cannot thank you, Doctor Cole.”  Kenny hung up, unaware that the doctor was adding further detail.

Almost at once he unhooked the receiver and summoned the club central.  Afterward Pietro, who took his turn at the switchboard when the day operator departed, spoke of the quiet curtness of his voice.

“Pietro?  Mr. O’Neill speaking.  I want you, at once, to look up the earliest connecting train with Finlake, Pennsylvania, any road.”

“Yes, sir,” began Pietro.  “What—­” but the receiver had clicked into place.

Kenny stared with a shudder at the withered fern, his face as white as chalk.

A tearing hand seemed clinging to his brain.

In the face of this grief-stricken terror that quaked and burned in his soul, etching unforgettable scars, the recollection of his unsteady spurts of penance rose to mock him with their artificiality.  His remorse had been but a pale, theatric spree!  And now in this forgetful winter of his love, Fate had decoyed him into optimistic quietude only to thrust savagely and deep.  Remorse in the raw!  Was it punishment—­punishment for the farcical penitent on the highway who had smiled into a woman’s soft eyes, forgetting—­

He answered Pietro’s ring with a throbbing sense of confusion in his forehead.

The best connecting train and the earliest left the Pennsylvania Terminal at eleven.  It was now but five.  How could he wait?

“Pietro,” he said, “give me now Doctor Barrington’s office.  And tell the operator to put me through to his private wire.  It’s urgent.  I do not want the nurse in the anteroom.  When you ring for me I want Dr. Barrington ready at the other end and I want you yourself, Pietro, to be sure he’s there.”