The voice went on, funereal, gentle.  Kenny’s eyes blurred.  Sweat came coldly forth upon his forehead.  At the first thud of earth he choked and turned away, the pain unbearable.  Adam Craig had driven his nephew away . . . with a passion of self . . . and he had died with mercy at his bedside, not love.  A passionate hunger for Brian stirred in Kenny’s heart and made him lonely.  Ah! how farcical his penance!  Some nameless thing of self linked him to Adam Craig.  The thought was horrible.  Some nameless thing linked each mournful detail of to-day to the tragedy of long ago. . . .  And then mercifully the thing became a blur of November wind, a monotonous voice of sorrow, the thud of earth and the end.

The coach toiled up the hill and Kenny, with Joan in his arms, forgot.

“Mavourneen,” he said wistfully, “let’s slip away, you and I, to the cabin in the pines.  I want you to myself.  And there in the house—­” he looked away.  The thought of the old house, bleak and desolate at its best and haunted now by the sense of a presence gone, oppressed him.

Joan nodded.

“And not that dress!” begged Kenny with a shudder.

She laid her cheek against his shoulder.

“It was just for to-day, Kenny.  Hannah thought it best.”  Her soft eyes, curiously child-like with the shadow of sadness in them, appealed to him for understanding.  He kissed her, marveling afresh at the tender miracle of peace and tenderness her presence brought him.

“Had I loved Uncle a great deal more—­it isn’t wrong for me to say that now, Kenny?”

“It would be wrong, dear, if you made pretense of something you couldn’t feel.”

“I—­I meant that even then I could have mourned him better with my heart than this—­this dreadful dress.  It would carry gloom wherever I went.  And that would be selfish.”

He blessed her shy intelligence and kissed her again.  Then the carriage stopped at the farmhouse door and Kenny hurried up to his room to find clothes less formal and depressing.  Afterward he went ahead to the cabin and built a fire.

The crackle of the wood was lively to his ears and cheerful.  The room grew, warm and homelike.  When Joan came a little later, he was whistling softly and making tea.  He liked her dress.  It was dark and soft.  He liked the lace fichu at her throat.  And he liked the huge old-fashioned cameo that fastened it.

“Hughie is hunting the key to the table-drawer,” she said.  “I told him about the cabin.  It doesn’t matter now.  Poor Uncle!” She blinked and wiped her eyes.  “He didn’t mean to be cruel, Kenny.  It was the brandy and the pain.  If Hughie finds the key, he wondered if you’d go over Uncle’s papers to-night.  The will is there.”

“The will!” said Kenny.  He put wood on the fire in some excitement.  A miser’s will!

Joan’s eyes were tender.

“Kenny, how good you’ve been!”