"Dining out at Brent's," he soliloquized, "and they're so taken up with each other they've forgotten the flag. I do not remember that the Brent girl ever forgot it before. She loves him."



XV

Following his parting with Nan Brent on Saturday night, Donald McKaye went directly to the mill office, in front of which his car was parked, entered the car, and drove home to The Dreamerie, quite oblivious of the fact that he was not the only man in Port Agnew who had spent an interesting and exciting evening. So thoroughly mixed were his emotions that he was not quite certain whether he was profoundly happy or incurably wretched. When he gave way to rejoicing in his new-found love, straightway he was assailed by a realization of the barriers to his happiness—a truly masculine recognition of the terrible bar sinister to Nan's perfect wifehood induced a veritable shriveling of his soul, a mental agony all the more intense because it was the first unhappiness he had ever experienced.

His distress was born of the knowledge that between the Sawdust Pile and The Dreamerie there stretched a gulf as wide and deep as the Bight of Tyee. He was bred of that puritanical stock which demands that the mate for a male of its blood must be of original purity, regardless of the attitude of leniency on the part of that male for lapses from virtue in one of his own sex. This creed, Donald had accepted as naturally, as inevitably as he had accepted belief in the communion of saints and the resurrection of the dead. His father's daughter-in-law, like Caesar's wife, would have to be above suspicion; while Donald believed Nan Brent to be virtuous, or, at least, an unconscious, unwilling, and unpremeditating sinner, non-virtuous by circumstance instead of by her own deliberate act, he was too hard-headed not to realize that never, by the grace of God, would she be above suspicion. Too well he realized that his parents and his sisters, for whom he entertained all the affection of a good son and brother, would, unhampered by sex-appeal and controlled wholly by tradition, fail utterly to take the same charitable view, even though he was honest enough with himself to realize that perhaps his own belief in the matter was largely the result of the wish being father to the thought.

Curiously enough, he dismissed, quite casually, consideration of the opinions his mother and sisters, their friends and his, the men and women of Port Agnew might entertain on the subject. His apprehensions centered almost entirely upon his father. His affection for his father he had always taken for granted. It was not an emotion to exclaim over. Now that he realized, for the first time, his potential power to hurt his father, to bow that gray head in grief and shame and humiliation, he was vouchsafed a clearer, all-comprehending vision of that father's love, of his goodness, his manliness, his honor, his gentleness, and his fierce, high pride; to Donald simultaneously came the knowledge of his own exalted love for the old man. He knew him as no other human being knew him or ever would know him; whence he knew old Hector's code—that a clean man may not mate with an unclean woman without losing caste.

He and Nan had discussed the situation but briefly; for they were young, and the glory of that first perfect hour could not be marred by a minute consideration of, misery in prospect. To-night, they had been content to forget the world and be happy with each other, apparently with the mutual understanding that they occupied an untenable position, one that soon must be evacuated.

Yes; he was the young laird of Tyee, the heir to a principality, and it would be too great a strain on mere human beings to expect his little world to approve of its highest mating with its lowest. Prate as we may of democracy, we must admit, if we are to be honest with ourselves, that this sad old world is a snobocracy. The very fact that man is prone to regard himself as superior to his brother is the leaven in the load of civilization; without that quality, whether we elect to classify it as self-conceit or self-esteem, man would be without ambition and our civilization barren of achievement. The instinct for the upward climb—the desire to reach the heights—is too insistent to be disregarded. If all men are born equal, as the framers of our Constitution so solemnly declared, that is because the brains of all infants, of whatsoever degree, are at birth incapable of thought. The democracy of any people, therefore, must be predicated upon their kindness and charity—human characteristics which blossom or wither according to the intensity of the battle for existence. In our day and generation, therefore, democracy is too high-priced for promiscuous dissemination; wherefore, as in an elder day, we turn from the teaching of the Man of Galilee and cling to tradition.

Tradition was the stone in the road to Donald McKaye's happiness, and his strength was not equal to the task of rolling it away.

Despair enveloped him. Every fiber of his being, every tender, gallant instinct drew him toward this wonder-girl that the world had thrust aside as unworthy. His warm, sympathetic heart ached for her; he knew she needed him as women like her must ever need the kind of man he wanted to be, the kind he had always striven to be. Had he been egotist enough to set a value upon himself, he would have told himself she was worthy of him; yet a damnable set of damnable man-made circumstances over which he had no control hedged them about and kept them apart. It was terrible, so he reflected, to know that, even if Nan should live the life of a saint from the hour of her child's birth until the hour of her death, a half-century hence, yet would she fail to atone for her single lapse while there still lived one who knew—and remembered. He, Donald McKaye, might live down a natural son, but Nan Brent could not. The contemplation of this social phenomenon struck him with peculiar force, for he had not hitherto considered the amazing inequalities of a double standard of morals.

For the first time in his life, he could understand the abject deference that must be shown to public opinion. He, who considered himself, and not without reason, a gentleman, must defer to the inchoate, unreasoning, unrelenting, and barbaric point of view of men and women who hadn't sense enough to pound sand in a rat-hole or breeding enough to display a reasonable amount of skill in the manipulation of a knife and fork. Public opinion! Bah! Deference to a fetish, a shibboleth, to the ancient, unwritten law that one must not do that which hypocrites condemn and cowards fear to do, unless, indeed, one can "get away with it."

Ah, yes! The eleventh commandment: "Thou shalt not be discovered." It had smashed Nan Brent, who had violated it, desolated her, ruined her—she who had but followed the instinct that God Almighty had given her at birth—the instinct of sex, the natural yearning of a trustful, loving heart for love, motherhood, and masculine protection from a brutal world. More. Not satisfied with smashing her, public opinion insisted that she should remain in a perennial state of smash. It was abominable!

Nan had told him she had never been married, and a sense of delicacy had indicated to him that this was a subject upon which he must not appear to be curious. To question her for the details would have been repugnant to his nicely balanced sense of the fitness of things. Nevertheless, he reflected, if her love had been illicit, was it more illicit than that of the woman who enters into a loveless marriage, induced to such action by a sordid consideration of worldly goods and gear? Was her sin in bearing a child out of wedlock more terrible than that of the married woman who shudders at the responsibilities of motherhood, or evades the travail of love's fulfilment by snuffing out little lives in embryo? He thought not. He recalled an evening in New York when he had watched a policeman following a drab of the streets who sought to evade him and ply her sorry trade in the vicinity of Herald Square; he remembered how that same policeman had abandoned the chase to touch his cap respectfully and open her limousine door for the heroine (God save the mark!) of a scandalous divorce.

"Damn it!" he murmured. "It's a rotten, cruel world, and I don't understand it. I'm all mixed up." And he went to bed, where, his bodily weariness overcoming his mental depression, he slept.

He was man enough to scorn public opinion, but human enough to fear it.



XVI

The heir of the Tyee mills and forests was not of a religious turn of mind for all his strict training in Christian doctrine, although perhaps it would be more to the point to state that he was inclined to be unorthodox. Nevertheless, out of respect to the faith of his fathers, he rose that Sunday morning and decided to go to church. Not that he anticipated any spiritual benefit would accrue to him by virtue of his pilgrimage down to Port Agnew; in his heart of hearts he regarded the pastor as an old woman, a man afraid of the world, and without any knowledge of it, so to speak. But old Hector was a pillar of the church; his family had always accompanied him thither on Sundays, and a sense of duty indicated to Donald that, as the future head of the clan, he should not alter its customs.

By a strange coincidence, the Reverend Mr. Tingley chose as the text for his sermon the eighth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John from the first to the eleventh verses, inclusive. Donald, instantly alert, straightened in the pew, and prepared to listen with interest to the Reverend Mr. Tingley's opinion of the wisdom of Jesus Christ in so casually disposing of the case of the woman taken in adultery.

"Dearly beloved," the pastor began, carefully placing an index-finger between the leaves of his Bible to mark the passage he had just read, "the title of my sermon this Sunday shall be: 'The First Stone. Let him who is without sin cast it.'"

"Banal, hypocritical ass!" Donald soliloquized. "She was the mezzo-soprano soloist in your choir four years, and you haven't tried to help her since she came back to the Sawdust Pile."

It was a good sermon, as sermons go. In fact, the Reverend Mr. Tingley, warming to his theme, quite outdid himself on the subject of charity as practised by his Redeemer, and, as a result, was the recipient of numberless congratulatory handshakes later at the church door. Donald agreed that it was an unusually good sermon—in theory; but since he knew it would collapse in practise, he avoided Mr. Tingley after service.

On the steps of the church he was accosted by Andrew Daney and the latter's wife, who greeted him effusively. Unfortunately for Mrs. Daney, Nan, in one of those bursts of confidence that must ever exist between lovers, had informed Donald the night previous of the motherly soul's interest in his affairs; wherefore he returned Mrs. Daney's warm greeting with such chilly courtesy that she was at no loss to guess the reason for it and was instantly plunged into a slough of terror and despair. She retained sufficient wit, however, to draw her husband away, thus preventing him from walking with Donald.

"I want to tell him about Dirty Dan," Daney protested, in a low voice. "As the boss, he ought to be told promptly of any injury to an employe."

"Never mind Dirty Dan," she retorted. "He'll hear of it soon enough. Let us congratulate Mr. Tingley on his sermon."

Donald, having turned his back on them almost rudely, strode down the street to his car and motored back to The Dreamerie. He spent the remainder of the morning force-breaking a setter puppy to retrieve; at one o'clock, he ate a cold luncheon, and immediately thereafter drove down to Port Agnew and brazenly parked his car in front of Caleb Brent's gate.

He entered without the formality of knocking, and Nan met him in the tiny entrance-hall.

"I couldn't wait until dinner-time," he explained. "Nobody home at The Dreamerie—" He took her face in his calloused hands, drew her to him. "You're sweet in that calico gown," he informed her, waiving a preliminary word of greeting. "I love you," he added softly, and kissed her. She clung to him.

"You should not have come here in broad daylight," she protested. "Oh, you big, foolish, impulsive dear! Don't you realize I want to protect you from the tongue of scandal? If you persist in forgetting who you are, does it follow that I should pursue a similar course?"

He ignored her argument.

"I'll help you get dinner, old blue-eyes," he suggested. "Let me shuck some corn or shell some peas or string some beans—any job where I can sit and look at you and talk to you."

"It will please me if you'll visit a little while with father Caleb," she suggested. "He's out on the sun-porch. He's far from well this morning. Do cheer him up, Donald dear."

Old Caleb hailed him with a pleasure that was almost childish. During the two weeks that had elapsed since Donald had seen him last, he had failed markedly.

"Well, how does the old sailor feel this morning?" Donald queried casually, seating himself opposite the old man.

"Poorly, Mr. Donald; poorly." He turned, satisfied himself that Nan was busy in the kitchen, and then leaned toward his visitor. "I've got my sailing-orders," he whispered confidentially. The man who had won a Congressional medal of honor, without clearly knowing why or how, had not changed with the years. He advanced this statement as a simple exposition of fact.

"Think so, Caleb?" Donald answered soberly.

"I know it."

"If you have no desire to live, Caleb, of course nature will yield to your desires. Remember that and buck up. You may have your sailing-orders, but you can keep the bar breaking indefinitely to prevent you from crossing out."

"I've done that for a year past. I do not wish to die and leave her, for my three-quarter pay stops then. But I suffer from angina pectoris. It's the worry, Mr. Donald," he added.

"Worry as to the future of Nan and the child?"

"Aye, lad."

"Well, Caleb, your worries are unnecessary. I feel it my duty to tell you that I love Nan; she loves me, and we have told each other so. She shall not suffer when you are gone. She has indicated to me that, some day, this—this mess may be cleared up; and when that happens, I shall marry Nan."

"So Nan told me this morning. I was wondering if you'd speak to me about it, and I'm glad you have done so—promptly. You—you—honor us, Mr. Donald; you do, indeed. You're the one man in the world I can trust her with, whether as good friend or husband—only, her hushand you'll never be."

"I see breakers ahead," Donald admitted. He had no desire to dissemble with this straightforward old father.

"We're poor folk and plain, but—please God!—we're decent and we know our place, Mr. Donald. If your big heart tells you to dishonor yourself in the eyes of your world and your people—mark you, lad, I do not admit that an alliance with my girl could ever dishonor you in your own eyes—Nan will not be weak enough to permit it."

"I have argued all that out with myself," Donald confessed miserably, "without having arrived at a conclusion. I have made up my mind to wait patiently and see what the future may bring forth."

"It may be a long wait."

"It will be worth while. And when you have sailed, I'll finance her to leave Port Agnew and develop her glorious voice."

"You haven't the right, Mr. Donald. My girl has some pride."

"I'll gamble a sizable sum on her artistic future. The matter will be arranged on a business basis. I shall lend her the money, and she shall pay me back with interest."

"Nan has a woman's pride. The obligation would remain always, even though the money should be repaid."

"I think we'll manage to adjust that," Donald countered confidently.

"Ah, well," the old fellow answered; "we've always been your debtors. And it's a debt that grows."

He loaded his pipe and was silent, for, after the fashion of the aged, he dared assume that his youthful auditor would understand just how the Brents regarded him.

"Well, my heart's lighter for our talk, lad," he declared presently. "If you don't mind, I'll have a little nap."

Donald, grateful for the dismissal, returned to the kitchen, where Nan was preparing the vegetables. Her child at once clamored for recognition, and, almost before he knew it, Donald had the tyke in his lap and was saying,

"Once upon a time there was a king and he had three sons——"

"He isn't interested in kings and princes, dear," Nan interrupted. "Tell him the story of the bad little rabbit."

"But I don't know it, Nan."

"Then you'll fail as a daddy to my boy. I'm surprised. If Don were your own flesh and blood, you would know intuitively that there is always a bad little rabbit and a good little rabbit. They dwell in a hollow tree with mother Rabbit and father Rabbit."

"Thanks for the hint. I shall not fail in this job of dadding. Well then, bub, once upon a time there was a certain Mr. Johnny Rabbit who married a very beautiful lady rabbit whose name was Miss Molly Cottontail. After they were married and had gone to keep house under a lumber-pile, Mr. Hezekiah Coon came along and offered to rent them some beautifully furnished apartments in the burned-out stump of a hemlock tree. The rent was to be one nice ear of sweet corn every month—"

The tale continued, with eager queries from the interested listener—queries which merely stimulated the young laird of Tyee to wilder and more whimsical flights of fancy, to the unfolding of adventures more and more thrilling and unbelievable until, at last, the recital began to take on the character of an Arabian Nights' tale that threatened to involve the entire animal kingdom, and only ceased when, with a wealth of mournful detail, Donald described the tragic death and funeral of the gallant young Johnny Rabbit, his fatherless audience suddenly burst into tears and howled lugubriously; whereupon Donald was hard put to it to bring Johnny Rabbit back to life mysteriously but satisfactorily, and send him scampering home to the hollow hemlock tree, there to dwell happily ever after.

His tale completed, Donald happened to glance toward Nan. She was regarding him with shining eyes.

"Donald," she declared, "it's a tremendous pity you haven't a boy of your own. You're just naturally intended for fatherhood."

He grinned.

"My father has been hinting rather broadly that a grandson would be the very last thing on earth to make him angry. He desires to see the name and the breed and the business in a fair way of perpetuation before he passes on."

"That is the way of all flesh, Donald."

"I wish it were not his way. My inability to comply with his desires isn't going to render dad or me any happier."

"Dear old boy, what a frightful predicament you're in!" she murmured sympathetically. "I wish I could be quite certain you aren't really in love with me, Donald."

"Life would be far rosier for all concerned if I were quite certain I was mistaking an old and exalted friendship for true love. But I'm not. You're the one woman in the world for me, and if I cannot have you, I'll have none other—Hello! Weeping has made this young fellow heavy-lidded, or else my fiction has bored him, for he's nodding."

"It's time for his afternoon nap, Donald." She removed the sleepy tot from his arms and carried him away to his crib. When she returned, she resumed her task of preparing dinner.

"Nan," Donald queried suddenly, "have I the right to ask you the name of the man who fathered that child?"

"Yes," she answered soberly; "you have. I wish, however, that you would not ask me. I should have to decline to answer you."

"Well, then, I'll not ask. Nevertheless, it would interest me mightily to know why you protect him."

"I am not at all desirous of protecting him, Donald. I am merely striving to protect his legal wife. His marriage to me was bigamous; he undertook the task of leading a dual married life, and, when I discovered it, I left him."

"But are you certain he married you?"

"We went through a marriage ceremony which, at the time, I regarded as quite genuine. Of course, since it wasn't legal, it leaves me in the status of an unmarried woman."

"So I understood from your father. Where did this ceremony take place?"

"In San Francisco." She came over, sat down beside him, and took one of his hard, big hands in both of hers. "I'm going to tell you as much as I dare," she informed him soberly. "You have a right to know, and you're too nice to ask questions. So I'll not leave you to the agonies of doubt and curiosity. You see, honey dear, father Brent wanted me to have vocal and piano lessons, and to do that I had to go to Seattle once a week, and the railroad-fare, in addition to the cost of the lessons, was prohibitive until your father was good enough to secure me a position in the railroad-agent's office in Port Agnew. Of course, after I became an employe of the railroad company, I could travel on a pass, so I used to go up to Seattle every Saturday, leaving here on the morning train. Your father arranged matters in some way so that I worked but five days a week."

"Naturally. Dad's a pretty heavy shipper over the line."

"I would receive my lessons late Saturday afternoons, stay overnight with a friend of mine, and return to Port Agnew on Sunday. He used to board the train at—well, the name of the station doesn't matter—every Saturday, and one day we got acquainted, quite by accident as it were. Our train ran through an open switch and collided with the rear end of a freight; there was considerable excitement, and everybody spoke to everybody else, and after that it didn't appear that we were strangers. The next Saturday, when he boarded the train, he sat down in the same seat with me and asked permission to introduce himself. He was very nice, and his manners were beautiful; he didn't act in the least like a man who desired to 'make a mash.' Finally, one day, he asked me to have dinner with him in Seattle, and I accepted. I think that was because I'd never been in a fashionable restaurant in all my life. After dinner, he escorted me to the studio, and on Sunday morning we took the same train home again. He was such good company and such a jolly, worldly fellow—so thoughtful and deferential! Can't you realize, Donald, how he must have appealed to a little country goose like me?

"Well, finally, daddy Brent learned that Signor Moretti, a tenor who had retired from grand opera, had opened a studio in San Francisco. We both wanted Moretti to pass on my voice, but we couldn't afford the expense of a journey to San Francisco for two, so daddy sent me alone. I wrote—that man about our plans, and told him the name of the steamer I was sailing on. Your father gave me a passage on one of his steam-schooners, and when we got to the dock in San Francisco—"

"He was there, eh? Came down by train and beat the steamer in." Donald nodded his comprehension. "What did Moretti say about your voice?"

"The usual thing. My Seattle teacher had almost ruined my voice, he declared, but, for all that, he was very enthusiastic and promised me a career within five years if I would place myself unreservedly in his hands. Of course, we couldn't afford such an expensive career, and the realization that I had to forego even the special inducements Signor Moretti was generous enough to make me quite broke my heart. When I told him about it—we were engaged by that time—he suggested that we get married immediately, in order that I might reside with him in San Francisco and study under Moretti. So we motored out into the country one day and were married at San Jose. He asked me to keep our marriage secret on account of some clause in his father's will, but I insisted upon my right to tell daddy Brent. Poor old dear! My marriage was such a shock to him; but he agreed with me that it was all for the best—"

"Well, I was quite happy for three months. My husband's business interests necessitated very frequent trips North—"

"What business was he in, Nan?"

"That is immaterial," she evaded him. "Presently, Signer Moretti contracted a severe cold and closed his studio for a month. My husband—I suppose I must call him that to identify him when I refer to him—had just gone North on one of his frequent trips, and since he always kept me generously supplied with money, I decided suddenly to take advantage of Moretti's absence to run up to Port Agnew and visit my father.

"In Seattle, as I alighted from the train, I saw my husband in the station with another woman. I recognized her. She was a friend of mine—a very dear, kind, thoughtful friend of several years' standing—the only woman friend I had in the world. I loved her dearly; you will understand when I tell you that she had frequently gone out of her way to be kind to me. It struck me as strange that he had never admitted knowing her, although frequently he had heard me speak of her. While I stood pondering the situation, he took her in his arms and kissed her good-by and boarded the train without seeing me. I slipped out of the station without having been seen by either of them; but while I was waiting for a taxicab, my friend came out of the station, saw me, and rushed up to greet me. It developed, in the course of our conversation following the usual commonplaces of greeting, that she had been down to the station to see her husband off on the train for San Francisco."

Donald whistled softly.

"How did you manage to get away with it, Nan?" he demanded incredulously.

"All my life I have been used to doing without things," she replied simply. "I suppose that helped a little. The shock was not so abrupt that I lost my presence of mind; you see, I had had a few minutes to adjust myself after seeing him kiss her in the station—and just then the taxicab came up and I escaped. Then I came home to the Sawdust Pile. I wrote him, of course, and sent the letter by registered mail, in order to make certain he would receive it. He did, but he did not answer. There was no reason why he should, for he was quite safe. I had assured him there was no necessity for worry on my account."

"Of all the crazy, fool things for you to do!" Donald cried sharply. "Why under the canopy did you deem it necessary to sacrifice yourself for him? Surely you did not love him—"

"I'm afraid I never loved him," she interrupted. "I—I thought I did, although, if he hadn't been away so frequently after our marriage, I would have learned to love him dearly, I think."

"Just human nature," Donald suggested. "Something akin to what trapshooters and golfers call a mental hazard."

"Of course he married me under an assumed name, Donald."

"Did you ever see a marriage certificate?"

"Oh, yes; I had to sign it in the presence of the minister."

Donald was relieved.

"Then, you great goose of a girl, you can clear your record any time you desire. The minister forwarded the marriage certificate to the state capital, and it is registered there with the State Board of Health. After registration, it was returned to the minister whose signature appeared on the certificate as the officiating clergyman. The minister undoubtedly returned the certificate to your husband."

"I never saw it again."

"What if you did not? You can procure a certified copy from the record in the county-clerk's office or from the records of the State Board of Health. Marriage records, old dear, are fairly well protected in our day and generation."

"I wrote to the State Board of Health at Sacramento. There is no record of my marriage there."

"That's strange. Why didn't you write the county clerk, of the county in which the license was issued?"

She smiled at him.

"I did. I had to, you know. My honor was at stake. The license was issued in Santa Clara County."

"Well, it will be a simple matter to comb the list of ministers until we find the one that tied the knot. A certified copy of the marriage license, with a sworn affidavit by the officiating clergyman—"

"The officiating clergyman is dead. A private detective agency in San Francisco discovered that for us."

"But couldn't you cover your tracks, Nan? Under the circumstances, a lie—any kind of deceit to save your good name—would have been pardonable."

"I couldn't help being smirched. Remember, my father was the only person in Port Agnew who knew I had been married; he heeded my request and kept the secret. Suddenly I returned home with a tale of marriage in anticipation of my ability to prove it. In that I failed. Presently my baby was born. People wondered who my husband was, and where he kept himself; some of the extremely curious had the hardihood to come here and question me. Was my husband dead? Of course not. Had I fibbed and told them he was, they would have asked when and where and the nature of the disease that carried him off. Was I divorced? Again I was confronted with the necessity for telling the truth, because a lie could be proved. Then the minister, to quiet certain rumors that had reached him—he wanted me to sing in the choir again, and there was an uproar when he suggested it—wrote to the California State Board of Health. When he received a reply to his letter, he visited me to talk it over, but I wasn't confiding in Mr. Tingley that day. He said I might hope for salvation if I confessed my wickedness and besought forgiveness from God. He offered to pray for me and with me. He meant well—poor, silly dear!—but he was so terribly incredulous that presently I told him I didn't blame him a bit and suggested that I be permitted to paddle my own canoe, as it were. Thanked him for calling, but told him he needn't call again. He departed in great distress."

"I hold no brief for the Reverend Tingley, Nan; but I'll be shot if your story will hold water in a world that's fairly well acquainted with the frailty of humankind. Of course I believe you—and, for some fool reason, I'm not ashamed of my own intelligence in so believing. I have accepted you on faith. What sets my reason tottering on its throne is the fact that you insist upon protecting this scoundrel."

"I insist upon protecting his wife. I love her. She has been kind to me. She's the only friend of my own sex that I have ever known. She's tubercular, and will not live many years. She has two children—and she adores her scamp of a husband. If I cannot convict that man of bigamy, would it not be foolish of me to try? And why should I inflict upon her, who has shown me kindness and love, a brimming measure of humiliation and sorrow and disgrace? I can bear my burden a year or two longer, I think; then, when she is gone, I can consider my vindication." She patted his hand to emphasize her unity of purpose. "That's the way I've figured it all out—the whole, crazy-quilt pattern, and if you have a better scheme, and one that isn't founded on human selfishness, I'm here to listen to it."

A long silence fell between them.

"Well, dear heart?" she demanded finally.

"I wasn't thinking of that," he replied slowly. "I was just trying to estimate how much more I love you this minute than I did five minutes ago."

He drew her golden head down on his shoulder and held her to him a long time without speaking. It was Nan who broke the spell by saying:

"When the time comes for my vindication, I shall ask you to attend to it for me, dear. You're my man—and I think it's a man's task."

His great fingers opened and closed in a clutching movement. He nodded.



XVII

When Donald returned to The Dreamerie about eleven o'clock, he was agreeably surprised to find his father in the living-room.

"Hello, dad!" he greeted The Laird cheerfully. "Glad to see you. When did you get back?"

"Came down on the morning train, Donald."

They were shaking hands now. The Laird motioned him to a chair, and asked abruptly.

"Where have you been all day, son?"

"Well, I represented the clan at church this morning, and, after luncheon here, I went down to visit the Brents at the Sawdust Pile. Stayed for dinner. Old Caleb's in rather bad shape mentally and physically, and I tried to cheer him up. Nan sang for me—quite like old times."

"I saw Nan Brent on the beach the other day. Quite a remarkable young woman. Attractive, I should say," the old man answered craftily.

"It's a pity, dad. She's every inch a woman. Hard on a girl with brains and character to find herself in such a sorry tangle."

The Laird's heavy heart was somewhat lightened by the frankness and lack of suspicion with which his son had met his blunt query as to where he had been spending his time. For the space of a minute, he appeared to be devoting his thoughts to a consideration of Donald's last remark; presently he sighed, faced his son, and took the plunge.

"Have you heard anything about a fight down near the Sawdust Pile last night, my son?" he demanded.

His son's eyes opened with interest and astonishment.

"No; I did not, dad. And I was there until nearly ten o'clock."

"Yes; I was aware of that, and of your visit there to-day and this evening. Thank God, you're frank with me! That yellow scoundrel and two Greeks followed you there to do for you. After you roughed the Greek at the railroad station, it occurred to me that you had an enemy and might hold him cheaply; so, just before I boarded the train, I telephoned Daney to tell Dirty Dan to shadow you and guard you. So well did he follow orders that he lies in the company hospital now at the point of death. As near as I can make out the affair, Dirty Dan inculcated in those bushwhackers the idea that he was the man they were after; he went to meet them and took the fight off your hands."

"Good old Dirty Dan! I'll wager a stiff sum he did a thorough job." The young laird of Tyee rose and ruffled his father's gray head affectionately. "Thoughtful, canny old fox!" he continued. "I swear I'm all puffed up with conceit when I consider the kind of father I selected for myself."

"Those scoundrels would have killed you," old Hector reminded him, with just a trace of emotion in his voice. "And if they'd done that, sonny, your old father'd never held up his head again. There are two things I could not stand up under—your death and"—he sighed, as if what he was about to say hurt him cruelly—"the wrong kind of a daughter-in-law."

"We will not fence with each other," his son answered soberly. "There has never been a lack of confidence between us, and I shall not withhold anything from you. You are referring to Nan, are you not?'"

"I am, my son."

"Well?"

"I am not a cat, and it hurts me to be an old dog, but—I saw Nan Brent recently, and we had a bit of talk together. She's a bonny lass, Donald, and I'm thinking 'twould be better for your peace of mind—and the peace of mind of all of us—if you saw less of her."

"You think, then, father, that I'm playing with fire."

"You're sitting on an open barrel of gunpowder with a lighted torch in your hand."

Donald returned to his chair and faced his father.

"Let us suppose," he suggested, "that the present unhappy situation in which Nan finds herself did not exist. Would you still prefer that I limit my visits to, say, Christmas and Easter?"

The Laird scratched the back of his head in perplexity.

"I'm inclined to think I wouldn't," he replied. "I'd consider your best interests always. If you married a fine girl from Chicago or New York, she might not be content to dwell with you in Port Agnew."

"Then Nan's poverty—the lowliness of her social position, even in Port Agnew, would not constitute a serious bar?"

"I was as poor as Job's turkey once myself—and your mother's people were poorer. But we came of good blood."

"Well, Nan's mother was a gentlewoman; her grandfather was an admiral; her great-grandfather a commodore, her great-great-granduncle a Revolutionary colonel, and her grandmother an F.F.V. Old Caleb's ancestors always followed the sea. His father and his grandfather were sturdy old Yankee shipmasters. He holds the Congressional medal of honor for conspicuous gallantry in action over and above the call of duty. The Brent blood may not be good enough for some, but it's a kind that's good enough for me!"

"All that is quite beside the question, Donald. The fact remains that Nan Brent loves you."

"May I inquire on what grounds you base that statement, dad?"

"On Saturday night, when you held her in your arms at parting, she kissed you." Donald was startled, and his features gave indubitable indication of the fact. His father's cool gray eyes were bent upon him kindly but unflinchingly. "Of course," he continued, in even tones, "you would not have accepted that caress were you not head over heels in love with the girl. You are not low enough to seek her favor for another reason."

"Yes; I love her," Donald maintained manfully. "I have loved her for years—since I was a boy of sixteen,—only, I didn't realize it until my return to Port Agnew. I can't very well help loving Nan, can I, dad?"

To his amazement, his father smiled at him sympathetically.

"No; I do not see how you could very well help yourself, son," he replied. "She's an extraordinary young woman. After my brief and accidental interview with her recently, I made up my mind that there would be something radically wrong with you if you didn't fall in love with her."

His son grinned back at him.

"Proceed, old lumberjack!" he begged. "Your candor is soothing to my bruised spirit."

"No; you cannot help loving her, I suppose. Since you admit being in love with her, the fact admits of no argument. It has happened, and I do not condemn you for it. Both of you have merely demonstrated in the natural, human way that you are natural human beings. And I'm grateful to Nan for loving you. I think I should have resented her not doing so, for it would demonstrate her total lack of taste and appreciation of my son. She informed me, in so many words, that she wouldn't marry you."

"Nan has the capacity, somewhat rare in a woman, of keeping her own counsel. That is news to me, dad. However, if you had waited about two minutes, I would have informed you that I do not intend to marry Nan—" He paused for an infinitesimal space and added, "yet."

The Laird elevated his eyebrows.

"'Yet?'" he repeated.

Donald flushed a little as he reiterated his statement with an emphatic nod.

"Why that reservation, my son?"

"Because, some day, Nan may be in position to prove herself that which I know her to be—a virtuous woman—and when that time comes, I'll marry her in spite of hell and high water."

Old Hector sighed. He was quite familiar with the fact that, while the records of the county clerk of Santa Clara County, California, indicated that a marriage license had been issued on a certain date to a certain man and one Nan Brent, of Port Agnew, Washington, there was no official record of a marriage between the two. The Reverend Mr. Tingley's wife had sorrowfully imparted that information to Mrs. McKaye, who had, in turn, informed old Hector, who had received the news with casual interest, little dreaming that he would ever have cause to remember it in later years. And The Laird was an old man, worldly-wise and of mature judgment. His soul wore the scars of human perfidy, and, because he could understand the weakness of the flesh, he had little confidence in its strength. Consequently, he dismissed now, with a wave of his hand, consideration of the possibility that Nan Brent would ever make a fitting mate for his son.

"It's nice of you to believe that, Donald. I would not destroy your faith in human nature, for human nature will destroy your faith in time, as it has destroyed mine. I'm afraid I'm a sort of doubting Thomas. I must see in order to believe; I must thrust my finger into the wound. I wonder if you realize that, even if this poor girl should, at some future time, be enabled to demonstrate her innocence of illicit love, she has been hopelessly smeared and will never, never, be quite able to clean herself."

"It matters not if I know she's a good woman. That is all sufficient. To hell with what the world thinks! I'm going to take my happiness where I find it."

"It may be a long wait, my son."

"I will be patient, sir."

"And, in the meantime, I shall be a doddering old man, without a grandson to sweeten the afternoon of my life, without a hope for seeing perpetuated all those things that I have considered worth while because I created them. Ah, Donald, lad, I'm afraid you're going to be cruel to your old father!"

"I have suffered with the thought that I might appear to be, dad. I have considered every phase of the situation; I was certain of the attitude you would take, and I feel no resentment because you have taken it. Neither Nan nor I had contemplated the condition which confronts us. It happened—like that," and Donald snapped his fingers. "Now the knowledge of what we mean to each other makes the obstacles all the more heart-breaking. I have tried to wish, for your sake, that I hadn't spoken—that I had controlled myself, but, for some unfathomable reason, I cannot seem to work up a very healthy contrition. And I think, dad, this is going to cause me more suffering than it will you."

A faint smile flitted across old Hector's stern face. Youth! Youth! It always thinks it knows!

"This affair is beyond consideration by the McKayes, Donald. It is utterly impossible! You must cease calling on the girl."

"Why, father?"

"To give you my real reason would lead to endless argument in which you would oppose me with more or less sophistry that would be difficult to combat. In the end, we might lose our tempers. Let us say, therefore, that you must cease calling on the lass because I desire it."

"I'll never admit that I'm ashamed of her, for I am not!" his son burst forth passionately.

"But people are watching you now—talking about you. Man, do ye not ken you're your father's son?" A faint note of passion had crept into The Laird's tones; under the stress of it, his faint Scotch brogue increased perceptibly. He had tried gentle argument, and he knew he had failed; in his desperation, he decided to invoke his authority as the head of his clan. "I forbid you!" he cried firmly, and slapped the huge leather arm of his chair. "I charge you, by the blood that's in you, not to bring disgrace upon my house!"

A slight mistiness which Donald, with swelling heart, had noted in his father's eyes a few moments before was now gone. They flashed like naked claymores in the glance that Andrew Daney once had so aptly described to his wife.

For the space of ten seconds, father and son looked into each other's soul and therein each read the other's answer. There could be no surrender.

"You have bred a man, sir, not a mollycoddle," said the young laird quietly. "I think we understand each other." He rose, drew the old man out of his chair, and threw a great arm across the latter's shoulders. "Good-night, sir," he murmured humbly, and squeezed the old shoulders a little.

The Laird bowed his head but did not answer. He dared not trust himself to do so. Thus Donald left him, standing in the middle of the room, with bowed head a trifle to one side, as if old Hector listened for advice from some unseen presence. The Laird of Tyee had thought he had long since plumbed the heights and depths of the joys and sorrows of fatherhood. The tears came presently.

A streak of moonlight filtered into the room as the moon sank in the sea and augmented the silver in a head that rested on two clasped hands, while Hector McKaye, kneeling beside his chair, prayed to his stern Presbyterian God once more to save his son from the folly of his love.



XVIII

It had been Donald McKaye's intention to go up to the logging-camp on the first log-train leaving for the woods at seven o'clock on Monday morning, but the news of Dirty Dan's plight caused him to change his plans. Strangely enough, his interview with his father, instead of causing him the keenest mental distress, had been productive of a peculiar sense of peace. The frank, sympathetic, and temperate manner in which the old laird had discussed his affair had conduced to produce this feeling. He passed a restful night, as his father observed when the pair met at the breakfast-table.

"Well, how do you feel this morning, son?" the old man queried kindly.

"Considerably better than I did before our talk last night, sir," Donald answered.

"I haven't, slept," old Hector continued calmly, "although I expect to have a little nap during the day. Just about daylight a comforting thought stole over me."

"I'm glad to hear it, dad."

"I've decided to repose faith in Nan, having none at all in you. If she truly loves you, she'll die before she'll hurt you."

"Perhaps it may be a comfort to you to know that she has so expressed herself to me."

"Bless her poor heart for that! However, she told me practically the same thing."

He scooped his eggs into the egg-cup and salted and peppered them before he spoke again. Then:

"We'll not discuss this matter further. All I ask is that you'll confine your visits to the Sawdust Pile to the dark of the moon; I trust to your natural desire to promote my peace of mind to see to it that no word of your—affair reaches your mother and sisters. They'll not handle you with the tact you've had from me."

"I can well believe that, sir. Thank you. I shall exercise the utmost deference to your desires consistent with an unfaltering adherence to my own code."

There it was again—more respectful defiance! Had he not, during the long, distressing hours of the night, wisely decided to leave his son's case in the hands of God and Nan Brent, The Laird would have flown into a passion at that. He compromised by saying nothing, and the meal was finished in silence.

After breakfast, Donald went down to the hospital to visit Dirty Dan. O'Leary was still alive, but very close to death; he had lost so much blood that he was in a state of coma.

"He's only alive because he's a fighter, Mr. McKaye," the doctor informed Donald. "If I can induce some good healthy man to consent to a transfusion of blood, I think it would buck Dan up considerably."

"I'm your man," Donald informed him. It had occurred to him that Dirty Dan had given his blood for the House of McKaye; therefore, the least he could do was to make a partial payment on the debt.

The doctor, knowing nothing of the reason for Dirty Dan's predicament, was properly amazed.

"You—the boss—desire to do this?" he replied.

"We can get one of this wild rascal's comrades—"

"That wild rascal is my comrade, doctor. I'm more or less fond of Dan." He had removed his coat and was already rolling up his sleeve. "I'm half Gael," he continued smilingly, "and, you know, we must not adulterate Dirty Dan's blood any more than is absolutely necessary. Consider the complications that might ensue if you gave Dan an infusion of blood from a healthy Italian. The very first fight he engaged in after leaving this hospital, he'd use a knife instead of nature's weapons. Get busy!"

But the doctor would take no liberties with the life-blood of the heir of Tyee until he had telephoned to The Laird.

"My son is the captain of his own soul," old Hector answered promptly. "You just see that you do your job well; don't hurt the boy or weaken him too greatly."

An hour after the operation, father and son sat beside Dirty Dan's bed. Presently, the ivory-tinted eyelids flickered slightly, whereat old Hector winked sagely at his son. Then Dirty Dan's whiskered upper lip twisted humorously, and he whispered audibly:

"Ye young divil! Oh-ho, ye young vagabond! Faith, if The Laird knew what ye're up to this night, he'd—break yer—back—in two halves!"

Hector McKaye glanced apprehensively about, but the nurse had left the room. He bent over Dirty Dan.

"Shut up!" he commanded. "Don't tell everything you know!"

O'Leary promptly opened his eyes and gazed upon The Laird in profound puzzlement.



"Wild horrses couldn't dhrag it out o' me," he protested. "Ask me no questions an' I'll tell ye no lies."

He subsided into unconsciousness again. The doctor entered and felt of his pulse.

"On the up-grade," he announced. "He'll do."

"Dan will obey the voice of authority, even in his delirium," The Laird whispered to his son, when they found themselves alone with the patient once more. "I'll stay here until he wakes up rational, and silence him if, in the mean time, he babbles. Run along home, lad."

At noon, Dirty Dan awoke with the light of reason and belligerency in his eyes, whereupon The Laird questioned him, and developed a stubborn reticence which comforted the former to such a degree that he decided to follow his son home to The Dreamerie.



XIX

A week elapsed before Hector McKaye would permit his son to return to his duties. By that time, the slight wound in the latter's arm where the vein had been opened had practically healed. Dirty Dan continued to improve, passed the danger-mark, and began the upward climb to his old vigor and pugnacity. Port Agnew, stirred to discussion over the affray, forgot it within three days, and on the following Monday morning Donald returned to the woods. The Laird of Tyee carried his worries to the Lord in prayer, and Nan Brent frequently forgot her plight and sang with something of the joy of other days.

A month passed. During that month, Donald had visited the Sawdust Pile once and had written Nan thrice. Also, Mrs. Andrew Daney, hard beset because of her second experience with the "Blue Bonnet" glance of a McKaye, had decided to remove herself from the occasions of gossip and be in a position to claim an alibi in the event of developments. So she abandoned Daney to the mercies of a Japanese cook and departed for Whatcom to visit a married daughter. From Whatcom, she wrote her husband that she was enjoying her visit so much she hadn't the slightest idea when she would return, and, for good and sufficient reasons, Daney did not urge her to change her mind.

Presently, Mrs. McKaye and her daughters returned to Port Agnew. His wife's letters to The Laird had failed to elicit any satisfactory reason for his continued stay at home, and inasmuch as all three ladies were deferring the trip to Honolulu on his account, they had come to a mutual agreement to get to close quarters and force a decision.

Mrs. McKaye had been inside The Dreamerie somewhat less than five minutes before her instinct as a woman, coupled with her knowledge as a wife, informed her that her spouse was troubled in his soul. Always tactless, she charged him with it, and when he denied it, she was certain of it. So she pressed him further, and was informed that he had a business deal on; when she interrogated him as to the nature of it (something she had not done in years), he looked at her and smoked contemplatively. Immediately she changed the subject of conversation, but made a mental resolve to keep her eyes and her ears open.

The Fates decreed that she should not have long to wait. Donald came home from the logging-camp the following Saturday night, and the family, having finished dinner, were seated in the living-room. The Laird was smoking and staring moodily out to sea, Donald was reading, Jane was at the piano softly playing ragtime, and Mrs. McKaye and Elizabeth were knitting socks for suffering Armenians when the telephone-bell rang. Jane immediately left the piano and went out into the entrance-hall to answer it, the servants having gone down to Port Agnew to a motion-picture show. A moment later, she returned to the living-room, leaving the door to the entrance-hall open.

"You're wanted on the telephone, Don!" she cried gaily. "Such a sweet voice, too!"

Mrs. McKaye and Elizabeth looked up from their knitting. They were not accustomed to having Donald called to the telephone by young ladies. Donald laid his magazine aside and strode to the telephone; The Laird faced about in his chair, and a harried look crept into his eyes.

"Close the door to the entrance-hall, Jane," he commanded.

"Oh, dear me, no!" his spoiled daughter protested. "It would be too great a strain on our feminine curiosity not to eavesdrop on Don's little romance."

"Close it!" The Laird repeated. He was too late. Through the open door, Donald's voice reached them:

"Oh, you poor girl! I'm so sorry, Nan dear. I'll be over immediately." His voice dropped several octaves, but the words came to the listeners none the less distinctly. "Be brave, sweetheart."

Mrs. McKaye glanced at her husband in time to see him avert his face; she noted how he clutched the arm of his chair.

To quote a homely phrase, the cat was out of the bag at last. Donald's face wore a troubled expression as he reentered the living-room. His mother spoke first.

"Donald! My son!" she murmured tragically.

"Hum-m—!" The Laird grunted. The storm had broken at last, and, following the trend of human nature, he was conscious of sudden relief.

Jane was the first to recover her customary aplomb.

"Don dear," she cooed throatily, "are we mistaken in our assumption that the person with whom you have just talked is Nan Brent?"

"Your penetration does you credit, Jane. It was."

"And did our ears deceive us or did we really hear you call her 'dear' and 'sweetheart'?"

"It is quite possible," Donald answered. He crossed the room and paused beside his father. "Caleb Brent blinked out a few minutes ago, dad. It was quite sudden. Heart-trouble. Nan's all alone down there, and of course she needs help. I'm going. I'll leave to you the job of explaining the situation to mother and the girls. Good-night, pop; I think you understand."

Mrs. McKaye was too stunned, too horrified, to find refuge in tears.

"How dare that woman ring you up?" she demanded haughtily. "The hussy!"

"Why, mother dear, she has to have help," her son suggested reproachfully.

"But why from you, of all men? I forbid you to go!" his mother quavered. "You must have more respect for us. Why, what will people say?"

"To hell with what people say! They'll say it, anyhow," roared old Hector. Away down in his proud old heart he felt a few cheers rising for his son's manly action, albeit the necessity for that action was wringing his soul. "'Tis no time for idle spierin'. Away with you, lad! Comfort the puir lass. 'Tis no harm to play a man's part. Hear me," he growled; "I'll nae have my soncy lad abused."

"Dad's gone back to the Hielands. 'Nough said." Elizabeth had recovered her customary jolly poise. Wise enough, through long experience, to realize that when her father failed to throttle that vocal heritage from his forebears, war impended, she gathered up her knitting and fled to her room.

Jane ran to her mother's side, drew the good lady's head down on her shoulder, and faced her brother.

"Shame! Shame!" she cried sharply. "You ungrateful boy! How could you hurt dear mother so!"

This being the cue for her mother to burst into violent weeping, forthwith the poor soul followed up the cue. Donald, sore beset, longed to take her in his arms and kiss away her tears, but something warned him that such action would merely serve to accentuate the domestic tempest, so, with a despairing glance at old Hector, he left the room.

"Pretty kettle o' fish you've left me to bring to a boil!" the old man cried after him. "O Lord! O Lord! Grant me the wisdom of Solomon, the patience of Job, and the cunning of Judas Iscariot! God help my mildewed soul!"



XX

The instant the front door closed behind her son, Mrs. McKaye recovered her composure. Had the reason been more trifling, she would have wept longer, but, in view of its gravity, her common sense (she possessed some, when it pleased her to use it) bade her be up and doing. Also, she was smitten with remorse. She told herself she was partly to blame for this scourge that had come upon the family; she had neglected her son and his indulgent father. She, who knew so well the peculiar twists of her husband's mental and moral make-up, should not be surprised if he cast a tolerant eye upon his son's philanderings; seemingly the boy had always been able to twist his father round his finger, so to speak. She sat up, dabbed her eyes, kissed Jane lovingly as who should say, "Well, thank God, here is one child I can rely upon," and turned upon the culprit. Her opening sentence was at once a summons and an invitation.

"Well, Hector?"

"It happened while you were away—while we were both away, Nellie. I was gone less than forty-eight hours—and he had compromised himself."

"You don't mean—really compromised himself!" Jane cried sharply, thus bringing upon her The Laird's attention. He appeared to transfix her with his index finger.

"To bed with you, young lady!" he ordered. "Your mother and I will discuss this matter without any of your pert suggestions or exclamations. I'm far from pleased with you, Jane. I told you to shut that door, and you disobeyed me. For that, you shall suffer due penance. Six months in Port Agnew, my dear, to teach you obedience and humility. Go!"

Jane departed, sniffling, and this stern evidence of The Laird's temper was not lost upon his wife. She decided to be tactful, which, in her case, meant proceeding slowly, speaking carefully, and listening well. Old Hector heaved himself out of his great chair, came and sat down on the divan with his wife, and put his arm round her.

"Dear old Nellie!" he whispered, and kissed her.

For the moment, they were lovers of thirty-odd years agone; their children forgotten, they were sufficient unto themselves.

"I know just how you feel, Nellie. I have done my best to spare you—I have not connived or condoned. And I'll say this for our son: He's been open and above-board with her and with me. He's young, and in a moment of that passion that comes to young men—aye, and young women, too, for you and I have known it—he told her what was in his heart, even while his head warned him to keep quiet. It seems to me sometimes that 'tis something that was to be."

"Oh, Hector, it mustn't be! It cannot be!"

"I'm hoping it will not be, Nellie. I'll do my best to stop it."

"But, Hector, why did you support him a moment ago?"

He flapped a hand to indicate a knowledge of his own incomprehensible conduct.

"She'd called for him, Nellie. Poor bairn, her heart went out to the one she knew would help her, and, by God, Nellie, I felt for her! You're a woman, Nellie. Think—if one of your own daughters was wishful for a kind word and a helping hand from an honorable gentleman and some fool father forbade it. Nellie wife, my heart and my head are sore tangled, sore tangled—"

His voice broke. He was shaken with emotion. He had stood much and he had stood it alone; while it had never occurred to him to think so, he had been facing life pretty much alone for a decade. It would have eased his surcharged spirit could he have shed a few manly tears, if his wife had taken his leonine old head on her shoulder and lavished upon him the caresses his hungry heart yearned for. Unfortunately, she was that type of wife whose first and only thought is for her children. She was aware only that he was in a softened mood, so she said,

"Don't you think you've been a little hard on poor Jane, Hector dear?"

"No, I do not. She's cruel, selfish, and uncharitable."

"But you'll forgive her this once, won't you, dear?"

He considered.

"Well, if she doesn't heckle Donald—" he began, but she stopped further proviso with a grateful kiss, and immediately followed Jane up-stairs to break the good news to her. She and Jane then joined Elizabeth in the latter's room, and the trio immediately held what their graceless relative would have termed "a lodge of sorrow." Upon motion of Jane, seconded by Elizabeth, it was unanimously resolved that the honor of the family must be upheld. At all cost. They laid out a plan of campaign.



XXI

Upon his arrival in Port Agnew, Donald called upon one Sam Carew. In his youth, Mr. Carew had served his time as an undertaker's assistant, but in Port Agnew his shingle proclaimed him to his world as a "mortician." Owing to the low death-rate in that salubrious section, however, Mr. Carew added to his labors those of a carpenter, and when outside jobs of carpentering were scarce, he manufactured a few plain and fancy coffins.

Donald routed Sam Carew out of bed with the news of Caleb Brent's death and ordered him down to the Sawdust Pile in his capacity of mortician; then he hastened there himself in advance of Mr. Carew. Nan was in the tiny living-room, her head pillowed on the table, when Donald entered, and when she had sobbed herself dry-eyed in his arms, they went in to look at old Caleb. He had passed peacefully away an hour after retiring for the night; Nan had straightened his limbs and folded the gnarled hands over the still heart; in the great democracy of death, his sad old face had settled into peaceful lines such as had been present in the days when Nan was a child and she and her father had been happy building a home on the Sawdust Pile. As Donald looked at him and reflected on the tremendous epics of a career that the world regarded as commonplace, when he recalled the sloop old Caleb had built for him with so much pride and pleaure, the long-forgotten fishing trips and races in the bight, the wondrous tales the old sailor had poured into his boyish ears, together with the affection and profound respect, as for a superior being, which the old man had always held for him, the young laird of Tyee mingled a tear or two with those of the orphaned Nan.

"I've told Sam Carew to come for him," he informed Nan, when they had returned to the living-room. "I shall attend to all of the funeral arrangements. Funeral the day after to-morrow, say in the morning. Are there any relatives to notify?"

"None that would be interested, Donald."

"Do you wish a religious service?"

"Certainly not by the Reverend Tingley."

"Then I'll get somebody else. Anything else? Money, clothes?"

She glanced at him with all the sweetness and tenderness of her great love lambent in her wistful sea-blue eyes.

"What a poor thing is pride in the face of circumstances," she replied drearily. "I haven't sufficient strength of character to send you away. I ought to, for your own sake, but since you're the only one that cares, I suppose you'll have to pay the price. You might lend me a hundred dollars, dear. Perhaps some-day I'll repay it."

He laid the money in her hand and retained the hand in his; thus they sat gazing into the blue flames of the driftwood fire—she hopelessly, he with masculine helplessness. Neither spoke, for each was busy with personal problems.

The arrival of Mr. Carew interrupted their sad thoughts. When he had departed with the harvest of his grim profession, the thought that had been uppermost in Donald's mind found expression.

"It's going to be mighty hard on you living here alone."

"It's going to be hard on me wherever I live—alone," she replied resignedly.

"Wish I could get some woman to come and live with you until we can adjust your affairs, Nan. Tingley's wife's a good sort. Perhaps—"

She shook her head.

"I prefer my own company—when I cannot have yours."

A wave of bitterness, of humiliation swept over him in the knowledge that he could not ask one of his own sisters to help her. Truly he dwelt in an unlovely world.

He glanced at Nan again, and suddenly there came over him a great yearning to share her lot, even at the price of sharing her shame. He was not ashamed of her, and she knew it; yet both were fearful of revealing that fact to their fellow mortals. The conviction stole over Donald McKaye that he was not being true to himself, that he was not a man of honor in the fullest sense or a gentleman in the broadest meaning of the word. And that, to the heir of a principality, was a dangerous thought.

He then took tender leave of the girl and walked all the way home. His father had not retired when he reached The Dreamerie, and the sight of that stern yet kindly and wholly understandable person moved him to sit down beside The Laird on the divan and take the old man's hand in his childishly.

"Dad, I'm in hell's own hole!" he blurted. "I'm so unhappy!"

"Yes, son; I know you are. And it breaks me all up to think that, for the first time in my life, I can't help you. All the money in the world will not buy the medicine that'll cure you."

"I have to go through that, too, I suppose," his son complained, and jerked his head toward the stairs, where, as a matter of fact, his sister Jane crouched at the time, striving to eavesdrop. "I had a notion, as I walked home, that I'd refuse to permit them to discuss my business with me."

"This particular business of yours is, unfortunately, something which they believe to be their business, also. God help me, I agree with them!"

"Well, they had better be mighty careful how they speak of Nan Brent," Donald returned darkly. "This is something I have to fight out alone. By the way, are you going to old Caleb's funeral, dad?"

"Certainly. I have always attended the funerals of my neighbors, and I liked and respected Caleb Brent. Always reminded me of a lost dog. But he had a man's pride. I'll say that for him."

"Thank you, father. Ten o'clock, the day after to-morrow, from the little chapel. There isn't going to be a preacher present, so I'd be obliged if you'd offer a prayer and read the burial service. That old man and I were pals, and I want a real human being to preside at his obsequies."

The Laird whistled softly. He was on the point of asking to be excused, but reflected that Donald was bound to attend the funeral and that his father's presence would tend to detract from the personal side of the unprecedented spectacle and render it more of a matter of family condescension in so far as Port Agnew was concerned.

"Very well, lad," he replied; "I'm forced to deny you so much 'twould be small of me not to grant you a wee favor now and then. I'll do my best. And you might send a nurse from the company hospital to stay with Nan for a week or two."

"Good old file!" his son murmured gratefully, and, bidding his father good-night, climbed the stairs to his room. Hearing his footsteps ascending, Jane emerged from the rear of the landing; simultaneously, his mother and Elizabeth appeared at the door of the latter's room. He had the feeling of a captured missionary running the gantlet of a forest of spears en route to a grill over a bed of coals.

"Donald dear," Elizabeth called throatily, "come here."

"Donald dear is going to bed," he retorted savagely. "'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.' Good-night!"

"But you must discuss this matter with us!" Jane clamored. "How can you expect us to rest until we have your word of honor that you—"

The Laird had appeared at the foot of the stairs, having followed his son in anticipation of an interview which he had forbidden.

"Six months, Janey," he called up; "and there'll be no appeal from that decision. Nellie! Elizabeth! Poor Jane will be lonesome in Port Agnew, and I'm not wishful to be too hard on her. You'll keep her company." There was a sound of closing doors, and silence settled over The Dreamerie, that little white home that The Laird of Tyee had built and dedicated to peace and love. For he was the master here.



XXII

Caleb Brent's funeral was the apotheosis of simplicity. Perhaps a score of the old sailor's friends and neighbors attended, and there were, perhaps, half a dozen women—motherly old souls who had known Nan intimately in the days when she associated with their daughters and who felt in the presence of death a curious unbending of a curious and indefinable hostility. Sam Carew, arrayed in the conventional habiliments of his profession, stood against the wall and closed his eyes piously when Hector McKaye, standing beside old Caleb, spoke briefly and kindly of the departed and with a rough eloquence that stirred none present—not even Nan, who, up to that moment, entirely ignorant of The Laird's intention, could only gaze at him, amazed and incredulous—more than it stirred The Laird himself. The sonorous and beautiful lines of the burial service took on an added beauty and dignity as he read them, for The Laird believed! And when he had finished reading the service, he looked up, and his kind gaze lay gently on Nan Brent as he said:

"My friends, we will say a wee bit prayer for Caleb wi' all the earnestness of our hearts. O Lorrd, now that yon sailor has towed out on his last long cruise, we pray thee to gie him a guid pilot—aye, an archangel, for he was ever an honest man and brave—to guide him to thy mansion. Forgie him his trespasses and in thy great mercy grant comfort to this poor bairn he leaves behind. And thine shall be the honor and the glory, forever and ever. Amen!"

None present, except Donald, realized the earnestness of that prayer, for, as always under the stress of deep emotion, The Laird had grown Scotchy. Mrs. Tingley, a kindly little soul who had felt it her Christian duty to be present, moved over to the little organ, and Nan, conspicuous in a four-year-old tailored suit and a black sailor-hat, rose calmly from her seat and stood beside the minister's wife. For a moment, her glance strayed over the little audience. Then she sang—not a hymn, but just a little song her father had always liked—the haunting, dignified melody that has been set to Stevenson's "Requiem."

Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be. Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter, home from the hill.

The Laird, watching her narrowly, realized the effort it was costing her; yet her glorious voice did not break or quiver once. "You wonderful, wonderful woman!" he thought, moved to a high pitch of admiration for her independence and her flagrant flaunting of tradition, "What a wife for my boy—what a mother for my grandson—if you hadn't spoiled it all!"

She rode to the cemetery in The Laird's car with The Laird, Donald, and Mrs. Tingley. Leaning on Donald's arm, she watched them hide old Caleb beneath the flowers from the gardens of The Dreamerie; then The Laird read the service at the grave and they returned to the Sawdust Pile, where Nan's child (he had been left at home in charge of a nurse from the Tyee Lumber Company's hospital) experienced more or less difficulty deciding whether Donald or The Laird was his father.

The Laird now considered his duty to Caleb Brent accomplished. He remained at the Sawdust Pile a period barely sufficient for Nan to express her sense of obligation.

"In a month, my dear girl," he whispered, as he took her hand, "you'll have had time to adjust yourself and decide on the future. Then we'll have a little talk."

She smiled bravely up at him through misty eyes and shook her head. She read his thoughts far better than he knew.

Father and son repaired to the private office at the mill, and The Laird seated himself in his old swivel chair.

"Now then, lad," he demanded, "have I been a good sport?"

"You have, indeed, father! I'm grateful to you."

"You needn't be. I wouldn't have missed that funeral for considerable. That girl can sing like an angel, and, man, the courage of her! 'Twas sweet of her, singing to old Caleb like that, but I much mistake if she won't be talked about for it. 'Twill be said she's heartless." He handed his son a cigar and snipped the end off one for himself. "We'll be needing the Sawdust Pile now for a drying-yard," he announced complacently.

"You mean——"

"I mean, my son, that you're dreaming of the impossible, and that it's time for you to wake up. I want no row about it. I can't bear to hear your mother and sisters carrying on longer. I'll never get over thinking what a pity it is that girl is damaged goods. She must not be wife to son of mine."

The young laird of Tyee bowed his head.

"I can't give her up, father," he murmured. "By God, I can't!"

"There can be no happiness without honor, and you'll not be the first to make our name a jest in the mouths of Port Agnew. You will write her and tell her of my decision; if you do not wish to, then I shall do it for you. Trust her to understand and not hold it against you. And it is my wish that you should not see her again. She must be cared for, but when that time comes, I shall attend to it; you know me well enough to realize I'll do that well." He laid his hand tenderly on the young man's shoulder. "This is your first love, my son. Time and hard work will help you forget—and I'll wait for my grandson."

"And if I should not agree to this—what?"

"Obey me for a month—and then ask me that question if you will. I'm—I'm a bit unprepared for an answer on such short notice."

Donald bowed his head.

"Very well, sir. I'll think it over for a month—on one condition."

"Thank you, my son," said The Laird of Tyee. "And what is the condition?"

"Let mother and the girls go to Seattle or Honolulu or Shanghai or some other seaport—anywhere, provided they're not at The Dreamerie when I return to Port Agnew. I'm going to spend that damnable month in the woods, week-ends and all, and wrestle with this problem."

Old Hector smiled a small smile.

"I'm an old ass," he declared. "Have it your own way, only—by the gods, I ought to teach them sense. I've spoiled them, and I ought to unspoil them. They drive me crazy, much as I love them."

* * * * *

The Laird went home that afternoon lighter of heart than he had been for a month. He told himself that his firm stand with Donald had rather staggered that young man, and that a month of reflection, far from the disturbing influence of Nan Brent's magnetic presence, would induce Donald to adopt a sensible course.



XXIII

Since that night when Mr. Daney, standing aloof in the dark vacant lot close to the Sawdust Pile, had seen Donald McKaye, in the light cast through the open door of Caleb Brent's cottage, take Nan Brent in his arms and kiss her, since he had heard Nan Brent's voice apply to the young laird of Port Agnew a term so endearing as to constitute a verbal caress, his practical and unromantic soul had been in a turmoil of apprehension.

It seemed to him that in old Hector he noted signs of deep mental perturbation. Also, he told himself, he detected more shades than lights in Donald's usually pleasant features; so, knowing full well that which he knew and which neither The Laird nor Donald suspected him of knowing, to wit: that a declaration of love had been made between Nan Brent and the heir to the Tyee millions, Mr. Daney came to the conclusion, one evening about a week after old Caleb's funeral, that something had to be done—and done quickly—to avert the scandal which impended. To his way of reasoning, however, it appeared that nothing along this line was possible of accomplishment while Nan Brent remained in Port Agnew; so Mr. Daney brought to play all of his considerable intelligence upon the problem of inducing her to leave.

Now, to render Port Agnew untenable for Nan, thus forcing her to retreat, was a task which Mr. Daney dismissed not only as unworthy of him but also as impossible. As a director of the Bank of Port Agnew, he had little difficulty in ascertaining that Caleb Brent's savings-account had been exhausted; also, he realized that the chartering of Caleb's motor-boat, Brutus, to tow the municipal garbage-barge to sea and return, had merely been Donald's excuse to be kind to the Brents without hurting their gentle pride. To cancel the charter of the Brutus now would force Nan to leave Port Agnew in order to support herself, for Daney could see to it that no one in Port Agnew employed her, even had anyone in Port Agnew dared run such risk. Also, the Tyee Lumber Company might bluff her out of possession of the Sawdust Pile. However, Donald would have to be reckoned with in either case, and Mr. Daney was not anxious to have the weight of his young master's anger fall on his guilty head. He saw, therefore, that some indirect means must be employed.

Now, Mr. Daney wisely held, in contradiction to any number of people not quite so hard-headed as he, that absence does not tend to make the heart grow fonder—particularly if sufficient hard work and worry can be supplied to prevent either party to the separation thinking too long or too intensely of the absentee. Within a decent period following Nan's hoped-for departure from Port Agnew, Mr. Daney planned to impress upon The Laird the desirability of a trip to the Orient, while he, Daney, upon the orders of a nerve-specialist, took a long sea voyage. Immediately the entire burden of seeing that the Tyee Lumber Company functioned smoothly and profitably would fall upon Donald's young and somewhat inexperienced shoulders. In the meantime, what with The Laird's money and the employment of a third party or parties, it would be no trick at all to induce Nan Brent to move so far from Port Agnew that Donald could not, in justice to his business interests, desert those interests in order to pay his court to her.

"Dog my cats!" Mr. Daney murmured, at the end of a long period of perplexity. "I have to force the girl out of Port Agnew, and I can never do so while that motor-boat continues to pay her eighty dollars a month. She cannot exist on eighty dollars a month elsewhere, but she can manage very nicely on it here. And yet, even with that confounded charter canceled, we're stuck with the girl. She cannot leave Port Agnew without sufficient funds to carry her through for a while, and she'd die before she'd accept the gift of a penny from anybody in Port Agnew, particularly the McKayes. Even a loan from The Laird would be construed as a roundabout way of buying her off."

Mr. Daney pondered his problem until he was almost tempted to butt his poor head against the office wall, goat-fashion, in an attempt to stimulate some new ideas worth while. Nevertheless, one night he wakened from a sound sleep and found himself sitting up in bed, the possessor of a plan so flawless that, in sheer amazement, he announced aloud that he would be—jiggered. Some cunning little emissary of the devil must have crept in through his ear while he slept and planted the brilliant idea in Mr. Daney's brain.

Eventually, Mr. Daney lay down again. But he could not go to sleep; so he turned on the electric bedside-lamp and looked at his watch. It was midnight and at midnight no living creature, save possibly an adventurous or amorous cat, moved in Port Agnew; so Mr. Daney dressed, crept down-stairs on velvet feet, in order not to disturb the hired girl, and stepped forth into the night. Ten minutes later, he was down at the municipal garbage-barge, moored to the bulkhead of piles along the bank of the Skookum.

He ventured to strike a match. The gunwale of the barge was slightly below the level of the bulkhead; so Mr. Daney realized that the tide had turned and was at the ebb—otherwise, the gunwale would have been on a level with the bulkheads. He stepped down on the barge, made his way aft to the Brutus, moored astern, and boarded the little vessel. He struck another match and looked into the cabin to make certain that no member of the barge-crew slept there. Finding no one, he went into the engine-room and opened the sea-cock. Then he lifted up a floor-board, looked into the bilge, saw that the water therein was rising, and murmured,

"Bully—by heck!"

He clambered hastily back aboard the barge, cast off the mooring-lines of the Brutus, and with a boat-book gave her a shove which carried her out into the middle of the river. She went bobbing away gently on the ebb-tide, bound for the deep water out in the Bight of Tyee where, when she settled, she would be hidden forever and not be a menace to navigation. Mr. Daney watched her until she disappeared in the dim starlight before returning to his home and so, like Mr. Pepys, to bed, where he had the first real sleep in weeks. He realized this in the morning and marveled at it, for he had always regarded himself as a man of tender conscience and absolutely incapable of committing a maritime crime. Nevertheless, he whistled and wore a red carnation in his lapel as he departed for the mill office.



XXIV

Following the interview with his father, subsequent to Caleb Brent's funeral, Donald McKaye realized full well that his love-affair, hitherto indefinite as to outcome, had crystallized into a definite issue. For him, there could be no evasion or equivocation; he had to choose, promptly and for all time, between his family and Nan Brent—between respectability, honor, wealth, and approbation on one hand, and pity, contempt, censure, and poverty on the other. Confronting this impasse, he was too racked with torment to face his people that night and run the gantlet of his mother's sad, reproachful glances, his father's silence, so eloquent of mental distress, and the studied scorn, amazement, and contempt in the very attitudes of his selfish and convention-bound sisters. So he ate his dinner at the hotel in Port Agnew, and after dinner his bruised heart took command of his feet and marched him to the Sawdust Pile.

The nurse he had sent down from the Tyee Lumber Company's hospital to keep Nan company until after the funeral had returned to the hospital, and Nan, with her boy asleep in her lap, was seated in a low rocker before the driftwood fire when Donald entered, unannounced save for his old-time triple tap at the door. At first glance, it was evident to him that the brave reserve which Nan had maintained at the funeral had given way to abundant tears when she found herself alone at home, screened from the gaze of the curious.

He knelt and took both outcasts in his great strong arms, and for a long time held them in a silence more eloquent than words.

"Well, my dear," she said presently, "aren't you going to tell me all about it?"

That was the woman of it. She knew.

"I'm terribly unhappy," he replied. "Dad and I had a definite show-down after the funeral. His order—not request—is that I shall not call here again."

"Your father is thinking with his head; so he thinks clearly. You, poor dear, are thinking with your heart controlling your head. Of course you'll obey your father. You cannot consider doing anything else."

"I'm not going to give you up," he asserted doggedly.

"Yes; you are going to give me up, dear heart," she replied evenly. "Because I'm going to give you up, and you're much too fine to make it hard for me to do that."

"I'll not risk your contempt for my weakness. It would be a weakness—a contemptible trick—if I should desert you now."

"Your family has a greater claim on you, Donald. You were born to a certain destiny—to be a leader of men, to develop your little world, and make of it a happier place for men and women to dwell in. So, dear love, you're just going to buck up and be spunky and take up your big life-task and perform it like the gentleman you are."

"But what is to become of you?" he demanded, in desperation.

"I do not know. It is a problem I am not going to consider very seriously for at least a month. Of course I shall leave Port Agnew, but before I do, I shall have to make some clothes for baby and myself."

"I told my father I would give him a definite answer regarding you in a month, Nan. I'm going up in the woods and battle this thing out by myself."

"Please go home and give him a definite answer to-night. You have not the right to make him suffer so," she pleaded.

"I'm not prepared to-night to abandon you, Nan. I must have some time to get inured to the prospect."

"Did you come over to-night to tell me good-by before going back to the woods, Donald?"

He nodded, and deliberately she kissed him with great tenderness.

"Then—good-by, sweetheart," she whispered. "In our case, the least said is soonest mended. And please do not write to me. Keep me out of your thoughts for a month, and perhaps I'll stay out."

"No hope," he answered, with a lugubrious smile. "However, I'll be as good as I can. And I'll not write. But—when I return from that month of exile, do not be surprised if I appear to claim you for good or for evil, for better or for worse."

She kissed him again—hurriedly—and pressed him gently from her, as if his persistence gave her cause for apprehension.

"Dear old booby!" she murmured. "Run along home now, won't you, please?"

So he went, wondering why he had come, and the following morning, still wrapped in a mental fog, he departed for the logging-camp, but not until his sister Jane had had her long-deferred inning. While he was in the garage at The Dreamerie, warming up his car, Jane appeared and begged him to have some respect for the family, even though, apparently, he had none for himself. Concluding a long and bitter tirade, she referred to Nan as "that abandoned girl."

Poor Jane! Hardly had she uttered the words before her father appeared in the door of the garage.

"One year, Janey," he announced composedly. "And I'd be pleased to see the photograph o' the human being that'll make me revoke that sentence. I'm fair weary having my work spoiled by women's tongues."

"I'll give you my photograph, old pepper-pot," Donald suggested. "I have great influence with you have I not?"

The Laird looked up at him with a fond grin.

"Well?" he parried.

"You will remit the sentence to one washing of the mouth with soap and water to cleanse it of those horrid words you just listened to."

"That's not a bad idea," the stern old man answered. "Janey, you may have your choice, since Donald has interceded for you."

But Jane maintained a freezing silence and swept out of the garage with a mien that proclaimed her belief that her brother and father were too vulgar and plebeian for her.

"I'm having the deil's own time managing my family," old Hector complained, "but I'll have obedience and kindness and justice in my household, or know the reason why. Aye—and a bit of charity," he added grimly. He stood beside the automobile and held up his hand up for his son's. "And you'll be gone a month, lad?" he queried.

Donald nodded.

"Too painful—this coming home week-ends," he explained. "And Nan has requested that I see no more of her. You have a stanch ally in her, dad. She's for you all the way."

Relief showed in his father's troubled face.

"I'm glad to know that," he replied. "You're the one that's bringing me worry and breaking down her good resolutions and common sense." He leaned a little closer, first having satisfied himself, by a quick, backward glance, that none of the women of the family was eavesdropping, and whispered: "I'm trying to figure out a nice way to be kind to her and give her a good start in life without insulting her. If you should have a clear thought on the subject, I'd like your advice, son. 'Twould hurt me to have her think I was trying to buy her off."

"As I view the situation, all three of us have to figure our own angles for ourselves. However, if a happy thought should dawn on me, I'll write you. Think it over a few weeks, and then do whatever seems best."

So they parted.



XXV

A few days subsequent to Andrew Daney's secret scuttling of the motor-boat Brutus, Nan Brent was amazed to receive a visit from him.

"Good-morning, Nan," he saluted her. "I have bad news for you."

"What, pray?" she managed to articulate. She wondered if Donald had been injured up in the woods.

"Your motor-boat's gone."

This was, indeed, bad news. Trouble showed in Nan's face.

"Gone where?" she faltered.

"Nobody knows. It disappeared from the garbage-barge, alongside of which it was moored. I've had men searching for it two days, but we've given it up as lost. Was the Brutus, by any chance, insured against theft?"

"Certainly not."

"Well, the Tyee Lumber Company used reasonable care to conserve your property, and while there's a question whether the company's responsible for the loss of the boat if it's been stolen, even while under charter to us, nevertheless, you will be reimbursed for the value of the boat. Your father had it up for sale last year. Do you recall the price he was asking?"

"He was asking considerably less than he really believed the Brutus to be worth," Nan replied honestly. "He would have sold for fifteen hundred dollars, but the Brutus was worth at least twenty-five hundred. Values shrink, you know, when one requires ready cash. And I do not agree with you that no responsibility attaches to the Tyee Lumber Company, although, under the circumstances, it appears there is no necessity for argument."

"We'll pay twenty-five hundred rather than descend to argument," Daney replied crisply, "although personally I am of the opinion that two thousand would be ample." He coughed a propitiatory cough and looked round the Sawdust Pile appraisingly. "May I inquire, my girl," he asked presently, "what are your plans for the future?"

"Certainly, Mr. Daney. I have none."

"It would be a favor to the Tyee Lumber Company if you had, and that they contemplated removal to some other house. The Laird had planned originally to use the Sawdust Pile for a drying-yard"—he smiled faintly—"but abandoned the idea rather than interfere with your father's comfort. Of course, The Laird hasn't any more title to the Sawdust Pile than you have—not as much, in fact, for I do believe you could make a squatter's right stick in any court. Just at present, however, we have greater need of the Sawdust Pile than ever. We're getting out quite a lot of airplane spruce for the British government, and since there's no doubt we'll be into the war ourselves one of these days, we'll have to furnish additional spruce for our own government. Spruce has to be air-dried, you know, to obtain the best results, and—well, we really need the Sawdust Pile. What will you take to abandon, it and leave us in undisputed possession?"

"Nothing, Mr. Daney."

"Nothing?"

"Precisely—nothing. We have always occupied it on The Laird's sufferance, so I do not think, Mr. Daney," she explained, with a faint smile, "that I shall turn pirate and ingrate now. If you will be good enough to bring me over twenty-five hundred dollars in cash to-day, I will give you a clearance for the loss of the Brutus and abandon the Sawdust Pile to you within the next three or four days."

His plan had worked so successfully that Daney was, for the moment, rendered incapable of speech.

"Will you be leaving Port Agnew?" he sputtered presently. "Or can I arrange to let you have a small house at a modest rental—"

She dissipated this verbal camouflage with a disdainful motion of her upflung hand.

"Thank you. I shall leave Port Agnew—forever. The loss of the Brutus makes my escape possible," she added ironically.

"May I suggest that you give no intimation of your intention to surrender this property?" he suggested eagerly. "If word of your plan to abandon got abroad, it might create an opportunity for some person to jump the Sawdust Pile and defy us to dispossess him."

Mr. Daney sought, by this subterfuge, to simulate an interest in the physical possession of the Sawdust Pile which he was far from feeling. He congratulated himself, however, that, all in all, he had carried off his mission wonderfully well, and departed with a promise to bring over the money himself that very afternoon. Indeed, so delighted was he that it was with difficulty that he restrained himself from unburdening to The Laird, when the latter dropped in at the mill office that afternoon, the news that before the week should be out Nan Brent would be but a memory in Port Agnew. Later, he wondered how far from Port Agnew she would settle for a new start in life and whether she would leave a forwarding address. He resolved to ask her, and he did, when he reappeared at the Sawdust Pile that afternoon with the money to reimburse Nan for the loss of the Brutus.

"I haven't decided where I shall go, Mr. Daney," Nan informed him truthfully, "except that I shall betake myself some distance from the Pacific Coast—some place where the opportunities for meeting people who know me are nebulous, to say the least. And I shall leave no forwarding address. When I leave Port Agnew"—she looked Mr. Daney squarely in the eyes as she said this—"I shall see to it that no man, woman, or child in Port Agnew—not even Don McKaye or The Laird, who have been most kind to me—shall know where I have gone."

"I'm sorry matters have so shaped themselves in your life, poor girl, that you're feeling bitter," Mr. Daney replied, with genuine sympathy, notwithstanding the fact that he would have been distressed and puzzled had her bitterness been less genuine. In the realization that it was genuine, he had a wild impulse to leap in the air and crack his ankles together for very joy. "Will I be seeing you again, Nan, before you leave?"

"Not unless the spirit moves you, Mr. Daney," she answered dryly. She had no dislike for Andrew Daney, but, since he was the husband of Mrs. Daney and under that person's dominion, she distrusted him.

"Well then, I'll bid you good-by now, Nan," he announced. "I hope your lot will fall in pleasanter places than Port Agnew. Good-by, my dear girl, and good luck to you—always."

"Good-by, Mr. Daney," she replied. "Thank you for bringing the money over."



XXVI

By an apparent inconsistency in the natural order of human affairs, it seems that women are called upon far oftener than men to make the hardest sacrifices; also, the call finds them far more willing, if the sacrifice is demanded of them by love. Until Andrew Daney had appeared at the Sawdust Pile with the suddenness of a genie (and a singularly benevolent genie at that), Nan had spent many days wondering what fate the future held in store for her. With all the ardor of a prisoner, she had yearned to leave her jail, although she realized that freedom for her meant economic ruin. On the Sawdust Pile, she could exist on the income from the charter of the Brutus, for she had no rent to pay and no fuel to buy; her proximity to the sea, her little garden and a few chickens still further solved her economic problems. Away from the Sawdust Pile, however, life meant parting with her baby. She would have to place him in some sort of public institution if she would be free to earn a living for them both, and she was not aware that she possessed any adaptability for any particular labor which would enable her to earn one hundred dollars a month, the minimum sum upon which she could, by the strictest economy, manage to exist and support her child. Too well she realized the difficulty which an inexperienced woman has in securing employment in an office or store at a wage which, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, may be termed lucrative, and, lacking funds wherewith to tide her over until she should acquire experience, or even until she should be fortunate enough to secure any kind of work, inevitable starvation faced her. Her sole asset was her voice; she had a vague hope that if she could ever acquire sufficient money to go to New York and buy herself just sufficient clothing to look well dressed and financially independent, she might induce some vaudeville impresario to permit her to spend fifteen minutes twice or four times daily, singing old-fashioned songs to the proletariat at something better than a living wage. She had an idea for a turn to be entitled, "Songs of the 'Sixties."

The arrival of Andrew Daney with twenty-five hundred dollars might have been likened to an eleventh-hour reprieve for a condemned murderer. Twenty-five hundred dollars! Why, she and Don could live two years on that! She was free—at last! The knowledge exalted her—in the reaction from a week of contemplating a drab, barren future, she gave no thought to the extreme unlikelihood of anyone's daring to steal a forty-foot motor-boat on a coast where harbors are so few and far between as they are on the Pacific. Had old Caleb been alive, he would have informed her that such action was analogous to the theft of a hot stove, and that no business man possessed of a grain of common sense would have hastened to reimburse her for the loss after an inconsequential search of only two days. Had she been more worldly wise, she would have known that business men do not part with twenty-five hundred dollars that readily—otherwise, they would not be business men and would not be possessed of twenty-five hundred dollars. Nan only realized that, in handing her a roll of bank-notes with a rubber band round them, Andrew Daney had figuratively given her the key to her prison, against the bars of which her soul had beaten for three long years.

Now, it is doubtful whether any woman ever loved a man without feeling fully assured that she, more than any other person, was better equipped to decide exactly what was best for that man. Her woman's intuition told Nan that Donald McKaye was not to be depended upon to conserve the honor of the McKaye family by refraining from considering an alliance with her. Also, knowing full well the passionate yearnings of her own heart and the weakness of her economic position, she shrank from submitting herself to the task of repelling his advances. Where he was concerned, she feared her own weakness—she, who had endured the brutality of the world, could not endure that the world's brutality should be visited upon him because of his love for her. Strong of will, self-reliant, a born fighter, and as stiff-necked as his father, his yearning to possess her, coupled with his instinct for fair play, might and probably would lead him to tell the world to go hang, that he would think for himself and take his happiness where he found it. By all means, this must be prevented. Nan felt that she could not permit him to risk making a sorry mess of a life of promise.

Consumed with such thoughts as these, it was obvious that Nan should pursue but one course—that is, leave Port Agnew unannounced and endeavor to hide herself where Donald McKaye would never find her. In this high resolve, once taken, she did not falter; she even declined to risk rousing the suspicions of the townspeople by appearing at the general store to purchase badly needed articles of clothing for herself and her child. She resolved to leave Port Agnew in the best clothes she had, merely pausing a few days in her flight—at Vancouver, perhaps—to shop, and then continuing on to New York.