“It’s better,” said Brian sensibly, “if you don’t.  For a number of reasons.  But you must do something.  I mean something with the future in view.”

“Yes.”

“As far as I can make out,” went on Brian, puffing at his pipe, “you’re wildly unhappy and discontented at the farm and that worries your sister.  Of course your absence worries her too but the two letters we wrote that night you tumbled into my camp fire must have made her feel a lot better, particularly since we both expressed our intention of making the best of ourselves.  You say she won’t leave your uncle because he’s an invalid.  That leaves you without any string to your bow but your own inclination.  In a sense you’ve followed that too long.  I mean, Don, shirking the course of study the old minister mapped out for you when your sister kept on plugging.  You need it.”

“Nothing mattered,” said the boy bitterly.  “I knew I wouldn’t stay.  I didn’t dare.  Once,” he added in a low voice, “when Uncle cursed my sister and threw a bottle of brandy at her, I made up my mind to kill him.”

“Good Lord!” said Brian, shocked.

“That’s one of the reasons I don’t dare go back.  I’m afraid.  You can’t guess what it is,” he choked.  “He taunts and jeers and curses in a breath and he gets drunk every night.  I wish to God he would die!”

The wish was horrible in its sincerity.  Brian ignored it.

“If you were older,” said Brian, “and your chief need wasn’t school, I’d take you abroad with me, free lancing.  But in the circumstances, with your welfare somewhere else, that’s impossible.”

Donald hung his head.

“I—­I wish it wasn’t,” he blurted.  “I want to go wherever you go.”

“That first night when I asked you to tramp along with me,” said Brian gently, “I said, in my letter to your sister, that I’d see you through.  That I’m going to do.  But you’ve got to help me.  I want you, after I’m gone, to stay up here at the quarry, study nights, and next year work your way through college.”

The boy stared, blank terror in his eyes.

“A year’s work will put you on your feet—­your kind of work when the mood is on you—­and you can enter in the fall.  I know a chap who’s working his way through Yale.  He’d show you the ropes.”

“Here!” said Donald.  “Alone!”

“Here,” said Brian quietly, “alone.  I know you can do it.”

Don brushed his hair back heavily from his forehead.  It was but little browner than his face.  The gesture reminded Brian irresistibly of Kenny, Kenny in rebellion.

“It isn’t the college part,” Don said hopelessly.  “There I think I’d get through.  And I’d like to be an engineer.  It’s the year here.  An entrance examination would be stiff, wouldn’t it, Brian?”

“Yes.”

“I know chunks of a lot of things I don’t need, almost nothing of things I ought to know a lot about.  When I liked a thing, I studied.  And when I didn’t I let it slide.  It worried my sister.  And I work by fits and starts when there’s nobody around to keep me at it.  Up here alone, working all day and studying half the night, I’d never swing it.  It would mean the hardest kind of work.”