"I'm going," Kenny told him shortly, "to find a river. I'll keep going
until I find it."

The innkeeper after an interval of blank astonishment identified the
river at once. Kenny felt encouraged. Pressed to further detail,
however, he admitted a confusing plentitude of woods, hills and
farmhouses. Dangerously near the state of mind Garry called "running
in circles," Kenny fumed out to wait for the hotel phaeton and climbed
into it with a shudder of disgust. It had a mustard colored fringe.

But the phaeton creaked away into a wind and world of lilacs. Kenny
forgot the inn. He forgot the village. Another gust of warm, sweet
wind, another shower of lilac stars beside a well, another lane and he
would have to paint or go mad.

He neither painted nor lost his reason. He came instead to the river
and began again to fret. The road that but a moment before had made a
feint of stopping for good and all at a dark and hilly wall of cedars,
swept around a rocky curve and revealed the glint of the river. After
that by all the dictates of convenience it should have curved again and
continued its course to Kenny's destination, pleasantly parallel with
the bends of the river. Instead it crossed the river bridge and went
off at a foolish tangent, disappearing over the crest of a hill. Wild
and wooded country swept steeply down to the river edge. Kenny, who
had made a vow of penitential speed, must continue his search on foot.
The prospect filled him with dismay.

He dismissed the phaeton at the bridge and stared up and down the river
in gloomy indecision. Upstream or downstream? Heaven alone knew!