Whistling softly, he watched the boy gather wood.  Well, thank God! he was as unlike that white-faced moody lad who had stumbled into his Tavern of Stars as a boy could be.  He whistled a good deal.  He was as slim as a sapling, the slimness of muscle and health.  His eyes were clear and boyish.  And there was color in his face.  Best of all, to Brian’s mind, after the first sullen period of readjustment he had worked his own salvation and reverted by wholesome instinct to boyhood with its inexhaustible animal vigor, its gaucheries and its boisterous minutes of frolic heretofore denied.  Now save for the hours by the camp fire when he passionately blurted out again and again the tale of his rebellion until Brian knew his life as he knew the weather-lore of the open road, he seemed ever on the verge of laughter.

Brian smiled.  Attuned to the mood he summed up the achievement of his own summer.  The brawn of splendid health and a clear head!  For the one he could thank his gypsying; for the other, in a measure, he could thank the boy.

In the lonely hours before he came with his problems there had been solitude less soothing than Brian had expected.  There has been an inclination to smoke and brood and nurse certain sentimental misgivings about Kenny when the fire was low and the owls hooting in the forest.  After, mercifully—­for they might have driven him back to sunsets—­there had been no time.  The life of another had made its demand and sympathy with Brian was never passive.  Impossible somehow not to romp with the young savage yonder rejoicing in his freedom, with even work a lark!  Impossible not to laugh with him, fight out his battles with him and surrender with a sigh of content to the weariness and hunger of a caveman!

If now with autumn at hand the fortunes of the road had in them a grain more of hardship and less of romance, it was to be expected.  Brian had tramped to his goal.  The staleness was gone.  It was time to be up and off, seeking Whitaker.

A sausage burst its casing with an appetizing sizzle and leaped, it seemed of its own accord, into suicidal embers.  Brian rescued it with a stick and looked up.  Don had come back with the wood.

“It’s fall,” said Brian.  “The wind’s full of it to-night.  Last night I was cold.”

“So was I,” said Don.  Brian thought he looked a little out-of-sorts.

“It narrows down to two things,” said Brian, fishing in his pocket for some forks and spoons.  “Either we must acquire another blanket or two or get a job and sleep under cover until—­”

The boy’s imploring eyes upset him.  Brian turned a charred sausage and sighed.  There was his problem, he knew:  Don and his future.  And they were barely twenty miles away from his uncle’s farm.

“Remember the mountain quarry somewhere over there to the west?” he asked.  “Suppose we hike over there in the morning and see if they need some brawny arms to help ’em crush stone.  Seems to me there were a lot of shacks up back of it on the mountain.  We could live in one of them.”