"Mr. Daney, you're a dear," Nan cried, and presented her fair cheek for the tribute he claimed.

"Shake hands with a rebel, boy," Mr. Daney cried heartily to Donald. "God bless you and may you always be happier than you are this minute."

Donald wrung the Daney digits with a heartiness he would not have thought possible a month before.

"I've quarreled with your father, Donald," he announced, seating himself. "Over you—and you," he added, nodding brightly at both young people. "He thinks he's fired me." He paused, glanced around, coughed a couple of times and came out with it. "Well, what are you going to do now to put tobacco in your old tobacco box, Donald?"

Donald smiled sadly. "Oh, Nan still has a few dollars left from that motor-boat swindle you perpetrated, Mr. Daney. She'll take care of me for a couple of weeks until I'm myself again; then, if my father still proves recalcitrant and declines to have me connected with the Tyee Lumber Company, I'll manage to make a living for Nan and the boy somewhere else."

Briefly Mr. Daney outlined The Laird's expressed course of action with regard to his son.

"He means it," Donald assured the general manager. "He never bluffs. He gave me plenty of warning and his decision has not been arrived at in a hurry. He's through with me."

"I fear he is, my boy. Er-ah-ahem! Harumph-h-h! Do you remember those bonds you sent me from New York once—the proceeds of your deal in that Wiskah river cedar?"

"Yes."

"Your father desires that you accept the entire two hundred thousand dollars worth and accrued interest."

"Why?"

"Well, I suppose he thinks they'll come in handy when you leave Port Agnew."

"Well, I'm not going to leave Port Agnew, Andrew."

"Your father instructed me to say to you that he would take it kindly of you to do so—for obvious reasons."

"I appreciate his point of view, but since he has kicked me out he has no claim on my sympathies—at least not to the extent of forcing his point of view and causing me to abandon my own. Please say to my father that since I cannot have his forgiveness I do not want his bonds or his money. Tell him also, please, that I'm not going to leave Port Agnew, because that would predicate a sense of guilt on my part and lend some support to the popular assumption that my wife is not a virtuous woman. I could not possibly oblige my father on this point because to do so would be a violent discourtesy to my wife. I am not ashamed of her, you know."

Mr. Daney gnawed his thumb nail furiously. "'The wicked flee when no man pursueth'," he quoted. "However, Mr. Donald, you know as well as I do that if your father should forbid it, a dicky bird couldn't make a living in this town."

"There are no such restrictions in Darrow, Mr. Daney. The superintendent up there will give me a job on the river."

Mr. Daney could not forbear an expression of horror. "Hector McKaye's son a river hog!" he cried incredulously.

"Well, Donald McKaye's father was a river hog, wasn't he?"

"Oh, but times have changed since Hector was a pup, my boy. Why, this is dreadful."

"No, Mr. Daney. Merely unusual."

"Well, Donald, I think your father will raise the ante considerably in order to avoid that added disgrace and force you to listen to reason."

"If he does, sir, please spare yourself the trouble of bearing his message. Neither Nan nor I is for sale, sir."

"I told him you'd decline the bonds. However, Mr. Donald, there is no reason in life why you shouldn't get money from me whenever you want it. Thanks to your father I'm worth more than a hundred thousand myself, although you'd never guess it. Your credit is A-1 with me."

"I shall be your debtor for life because of that speech, Mr. Daney. Any news from my mother and the girls?"

"None."

"Well, I'll stand by for results," Donald assured him gravely.

"Do not expect any."

"I don't."

Mr. Daney fidgeted and finally said he guessed he'd better be trotting along, and Donald and Nan, realizing it would be no kindness to him to be polite and assure him there was no need of hurry, permitted him to depart forthwith.

"I think, sweetheart," Donald announced with a pained little smile, as he returned from seeing Mr. Daney to the front gate, "that it wouldn't be a half bad idea for you to sit in at that old piano and play and sing for me. I think I'd like something light and lilting. What's that Kipling thing that's been set to music?"

So we went strolling, Down by the rolling, down by the rolling sea. You may keep your croak for other folk But you can't frighten me!

He lighted a cigarette and stretched himself out on the old divan. She watched him blowing smoke rings at the ceiling—and there was no music in her soul.

In the afternoon the McKaye limousine drew up at the front gate and Nan's heart fluttered violently in contemplation of a visit from her husband's mother and sisters. She need not have worried, however. The interior of the car was unoccupied save for Donald's clothing and personal effects which some thoughtful person at The Dreamerie had sent down to him. He hazarded a guess that the cool and practical Elizabeth had realized his needs.



XLIII

Returning to the mill office, Mr. Daney sat at his desk and started to look over the mail. The Laird heard his desk buzzer sounding frequently and rightly conjecturing that his general manager was back on the job, he came into the latter's office and glared at him.

"I thought I fired you?" he growled.

"I know. You thought you did," the rebel replied complacently. "I see by your knuckles you've been fighting. Hope it did you good."

"It did. Are you going to leave this office?"

"No, sir."

"I didn't think you would. Well, well! Out with it."

Mr. Daney drew a deal of pleasure from that invitation. "The boy directs me to inform you, sir, that he will not accept the bonds nor any monies you may desire to give him. He says he doesn't need them because he isn't going to leave Port Agnew."

"Nonsense, Andrew. He cannot remain in this town. He hasn't the courage to face his little world after marrying that girl. And he has to make a living for her."

"We shall see that which we shall see," Mr. Daney replied enigmatically.

"I wonder if it is possible he is trying to outgame me," old Hector mused aloud. "Andrew, go back and tell him that if he will go to California to live I will deed him that Lassen county sugar and white pine and build him the finest mill in the state."

"The terms are quite impossible," Daney retorted and explained why.

"He shall get out of Port Agnew," The Laird threatened. "He shall get out or starve."

"You are forgetting something, sir."

"Forgetting what?"

"That I have more than a hundred thousand dollars in bonds right in that vault and that I have not as yet developed paralysis of the right hand. The boy shall not starve and neither shall he crawl, like a beaten dog currying favor with the one that has struck him."

"I am the one who has been struck—and he has wounded me sorely," The Laird cried, his voice cracked with anger.

"The mischief is done. What's the use of crying over spilled milk? You're going to forgive the boy sooner or later, so do it now and be graceful about it."

"I'll never forgive him, Andrew."

Mr. Daney walled his eyes toward the ceiling. "Thank God," he murmured piously, "I'm pure. Hereafter, every time Reverend Mr. Tingley says the Lord's prayer I'm going to cough out loud in church at the line: 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.' You'll hear that cough and remember, Hector McKaye."

A deeper shadow of distress settled over The Laird's stern features. "You're uncommon mean to me this bitter day, Andrew," he complained wearily. "I take it as most unkind of you to thwart my wishes like this."

"I'm for true love!" Mr. Daney declared firmly. "Ah come, come now! Don't be a stiff-necked old dodo. Forgive the boy."

"In time I may forgive him, Andrew. I'm not sure of myself where he is concerned, but we canna receive the girl. 'Tis not in reason that we should."

"I believe I'll cough twice," Daney murmured musingly.

And the following day being Sunday, he did! He sat two rows behind the McKaye family pew but across the aisle, and in a cold fury The Laird turned to squelch him with a look. What he saw in the Daney pew, however, chilled his fury and threw him into a veritable panic of embarrassment. For to the right of the incomprehensible general manager sat the young ex-laird of Port Agnew; at Daney's left the old Laird beheld his new daughter-in-law, while further down the pew as far as she could retreat, Mrs. Daney, with face aflame, sat rigid, her bovine countenance upraised and her somewhat vacuous glance fixed unblinkingly at a point some forty feet over Mr. Tingley's pious head. Donald intercepted the old man's amazed and troubled glance, and smiled at his father with his eyes—an affectionate overture that was not lost on The Laird ere he jerked his head and eyes once more to the front.

Mrs. McKaye and her two daughters were as yet unaware of the horror that impended. But not for long. When the congregation stood to sing the final hymn, Nan's wondrous mezzo-soprano rose clear and sweet over the indifferent-toned notes of every other woman present; to the most dull it would have been obvious that there was a trained singer present, and Mrs. McKaye and her daughters each cast a covert glance in the direction of the voice. However, since every other woman in the church was gazing at Nan, nobody observed the effect of her presence upon the senior branch of the McKaye family, for which small blessing the family in question was duly grateful.

At the conclusion of the service old Hector remained in his pew until the majority of the congregation had filed out; then, assuring himself by a quick glance, that his son and the latter's wife had preceded him, he followed with Mrs. McKaye and the girls. From the church steps he observed Donald and Nan walking home, while Mr. Daney and his outraged spouse followed some twenty feet behind them. Quickly The Laird and his family entered the waiting limousine; it was the first occasion that anybody could remember when he had not lingered to shake hands with Mr. Tingley and, perchance, congratulate him on the excellence of his sermon.

They were half way up the cliff road before anybody spoke. Then, with a long preliminary sigh, The Laird voiced the thought that obsessed them all.

"That damned mutton-head, Daney. I'd run him out of the Tyee employ if it would do a bit of good. I cannot run him out of town or out of church."

"The imbecile!" Elizabeth raged. Jane was dumb with shame and rage and Mrs. McKaye was sniffling a little. Presently she said:

"How dare he bring her right into church with him," she cried brokenly. "Right before everybody. Oh, dear, oh dear, is my son totally lacking in a sense of decency? This is terrible, terrible."

"I shall not risk such another awful Sunday morning," Elizabeth announced.

"Nor I," Jane cried with equal fervor.

"We shall have to leave Port Agnew now," Mrs, McKaye sobbed.

Old Hector patted her hand. "Yes, I think you'll have to, Nellie. Unfortunately, I cannot go with you. Daney doesn't appear to be quite sane of late and with Donald out of the business I'm chained to a desk for the remainder of my life. I fear, however," he added savagely, "I do not intend to let that woman run me out of my own church. Not by a damned sight!"

The instant they entered the house, rightly conjecturing that the Daneys had also reached their home, Mrs. McKaye went to the telephone and proceeded to inform Mr. Daney of the opinion which the McKaye family, jointly and severally, entertained for his idea of comedy. Daney listened respectfully to all she had to say touching his sanity, his intelligence, his sense of decency, and his loyalty to Hector and when, stung because he made no defense, she asked: "Have you no explanation to make us for your extraordinary behavior?" he replied:

"I am an usher of our church, Mrs. McKaye. When Donald and his wife entered the church the only vacant seats in it were in my pew; the only person in the church who would not have felt a sense of outrage at having your daughter-in-law seated with his or her family, was my self-sacrificing self. I could not be discourteous to Donald and I'm quite certain his wife has as much right in our church as you have. So I shooed them both up to my pew, to the great distress of Mrs. Daney."

"You should be ashamed of yourself, Andrew. You should!"

"I'm not ashamed of myself, Mrs. McKaye. I've been a pussy-foot all my life. I had to do something I knew would detract from my popularity, but since I had to do it I decided to do it promptly and as if I enjoyed it. Surely you would not have commended me had I met the young couple at the door and said to them: 'Get out of this church. It is not for such as you. However, if you insist upon staying, you'll have to stand up or else sit down on the floor. Nobody here wants to sit with you. They're afraid, too, they'll offend the Chief Pooh-bah of this town'."

"You could have pretended you did not see them."

"My dear Mrs. McKaye," Daney retorted in even tones, "do you wish me to inform your husband of a certain long distance telephone conversation? If so—"

She hung up without waiting to say good-by, and the following day she left for Seattle, accompanied by her daughters.

Throughout the week The Laird forbore mentioning his son's name to Mr. Daney; indeed, he refrained from addressing the latter at all unless absolutely necessary to speak to him directly—wherefore Daney knew himself to be blacklisted. On the following Sunday The Laird sat alone in the family pew and Mr. Daney did not cough during the recital of the Lord's prayer, so old Hector managed to conquer a tremendous yearning to glance around for the reason. Also, as on the previous Sunday, he was in no hurry to leave his pew at the conclusion of the service, yet, to his profound irritation, when he did leave it and start down the central aisle of the church, he looked squarely into the faces of Donald and Nan as they emerged from the Daney pew. Mrs. Daney was conspicuous by her absence. Nan's baby boy had fallen asleep during the service and Donald was carrying the cherub.

Old Hector's face went white; he gulped when his son spoke to him.

"Hello, Dad. You looked lonely all by yourself in that big pew. Suppose we come up and sit with you next Sunday?"

Old Hector paused and bent upon his son and Nan a terrible look. "Never speak to me again so long as you live," he replied in a low voice, and passed out of the church.

Donald gazed after his broad erect figure and shook his head dolefully, as Mr. Daney fell into step beside him. "I told you so," he whispered.

"Isn't it awful to be Scotch?" Nan inquired.

"It is awful—on the Scotch," her husband assured her. "The dear old fraud gulped like a broken-hearted boy when I spoke to him. He'd rather be wrong than president."

As they were walking home to the Sawdust Pile, Nan captured one of her husband's great fingers and swung it childishly. "I wish you didn't insist upon our going to church, sweetheart," she complained. "We're spoiling your father's Christianity."

"Can't help it," he replied doggedly. "We're going to be thoroughbreds about this, no matter how much it hurts."

She sighed. "And you're only half Scotch, Donald."



XLIV

By noon of the following day, Port Agnew was astounded by news brought by the crew of one of the light draft launches used to tow log rafts down the river. Donald McKaye was working for Darrow. He was their raftsman; he had been seen out on the log boom, pike pole in hand, shoving logs in to the endless chain elevator that drew them up to the seas. As might be imagined, Mrs. Daney was among the first to glean this information, and to her husband she repeated it at luncheon with every evidence of pleasure.

"Tut, tut, woman," he replied carelessly, "this is no news to me. He told me yesterday after service that he had the job."

The familiar wrinkle appeared for an instant on the end of her nose before she continued: "I wonder what The Laird thinks of that, Andrew?"

"So do I," he parried skilfully.

"Does he know it?"

"There isn't a soul in Port Agnew with sufficient courage to tell him."

"Why do you not tell him?"

"None of my business. Besides, I do not hanker to see people squirm with suffering."

She wrinkled her nose once more and was silent.

As Mr. Daney had declared, there was none in Port Agnew possessed of sufficient hardihood to inform the Laird of his son's lowly status and it was three weeks before he discovered it for himself. He had gone up the river to one of his logging camps and the humor had seized him to make the trip in a fast little motor-boat he had given Donald at Christmas many years' before. He was busy adjusting the carburetor, after months of disuse, as he passed the Darrow log boom in the morning, so he failed to see his big son leaping across the logs, balancing himself skilfully with the pike pole.

It was rather late when he started home and in the knowledge that darkness might find him well up the river he hurried.

Now, from the Bight of Tyee to a point some five miles above Darrow, the Skookum flows in almost a straight line; the few bends are wide and gradual, and when The Laird came to this home-stretch he urged the boat to its maximum speed of twenty-eight miles per hour. Many a time in happier days he had raced down this long stretch with Donald at the helm, and he knew the river thoroughly; as he sped along he steered mechanically, his mind occupied in a consideration of the dishonor that had come upon his clan.

The sun had already set as he came roaring down a wide deep stretch near Darrow's mill; in his preoccupation he forgot that his competitor's log boom stretched across the river fully two-thirds of its width; that he should throttle down, swerve well to starboard and avoid the field of stored logs. The deep shadows cast by the sucker growth and old snags along the bank blended with the dark surface of the log boom and prevented him from observing that he was headed for the heart of it; the first intimation he had of his danger came to him in a warning shout from the left bank—a shout that rose above the roar of the exhaust.

"Jump! Overboard! Quickly! The log boom!"

Old Hector awoke from his bitter reverie. He, who had once been a river hog, had no need to be told of the danger incident to abrupt precipitation into the heart of that log boom, particularly when it would presently be gently agitated by the long high "bone" the racing boat carried in her teeth. When logs weighing twenty tons come gently together—even when they barely rub against each other, nothing living caught between them may survive.

The unknown who warned him was right. He must jump overboard and take his chance in the river, for it was too late now to slow down and put his motor in reverse. In the impending crash that was only a matter of seconds, The Laird would undoubtedly catapult from the stern sheets into the water—and if he should drift in under the logs, knew the river would eventually give up his body somewhere out in the Bight of Tyee. On the other hand, should he be thrown out on the boom he would stand an equal chance of being seriously injured by the impact or crushed to death when his helpless body should fall between the logs. In any event the boat would be telescoped down to the cockpit and sink at the edge of the log field.

He was wearing a heavy overcoat, for it was late in the fall, and he had no time to remove it; not even time to stand up and dive clear. So he merely hurled his big body against the starboard gunwale and toppled overboard—and thirty feet further on the boat struck with a crash that echoed up and down the river, telescoped and drove under the log boom. It was not in right when old Hector rose puffing to the surface and bellowed for help before starting to swim for the log boom.

The voice answered him instantly: "Coming! Hold On!"

Handicapped as he was with his overcoat, old Hector found it a prodigious task to reach the boom; as he clung to the boom-stick he could make out the figure of a man with a pike pole coming toward him in long leaps across the logs. And then old Hector noticed something else.

He had swum to the outer edge of the log boom and grasped the light boom-stick, dozens of which, chained end to end, formed the floating enclosure in which the log supply was stored. The moment he rested his weight on this boom-stick, however, one end of it submerged suddenly—wherefore The Laird knew that the impact of the motor-boat had broken a link of the boom and that this broken end was now sweeping outward and downward, with the current releasing the millions of feet of stored logs. Within a few minutes, provided he should keep afloat, he would be in the midst of these tremendous Juggernauts, for, clinging to the end of the broken boom he was gradually describing a circle on the outside of the log field, swinging from beyond the middle of the river in to the left-hand bank; presently, when the boom should have drifted its maximum distance he would be hung up stationary in deep water while the released logs bore down upon him with the current and gently shoulder him into eternity.

He clawed his way along the submerging boom-stick to its other end, where it was linked with its neighbor, and the combined buoyancy of both boom-sticks was sufficient to float him.

"Careful," he called to the man leaping over the log-field toward him. "The boom is broken! Careful, I tell you! The logs are moving out—they're slipping apart. Be careful."

Even as he spoke, The Laird realized that the approaching rescuer would not heed him. He had to make speed out to the edge of the moving logs; if he was to rescue the man clinging to the boom-sticks he must take a chance on those long leaps through the dusk; he must reach The Laird before too much open water developed between the moving logs.

Only a trained river man could have won to him in such a brief space of time; only an athlete could have made the last flying leap across six feet of dark water to a four-foot log that was bearing gently down, butt first, on the figure clinging to the boom-stick. His caulks bit far up the side of the log and the force of his impact started it rolling; yet even as he clawed his way to the top of the log and got it under control the iron head of his long pike pole drove into the boom-stick and fended The Laird out of harm's way; before the log the man rode could slip by, the iron had been released and the link of chain between the two boom-sticks had been snagged with the pike hook, and both men drifted side by side.

"Safe—o," his rescuer warned Old Hector quietly. "Hang on. I'll keep the logs away from you and when the field floats by I'll get you ashore. We're drifting gradually in toward the bank below the mill."

The Laird was too chilled, too exhausted and too lacking in breath to do more than gasp a brief word of thanks. It seemed a long, long time that he clung there, and it was quite dark when his rescuer spoke again. "I think the last log has floated out of the booming ground. I'll swim ashore with you now, as soon as I can shuck my boots and mackinaw." A few minutes later he cried reassuringly, "All set, old-timer," and slid into the water beside The Laird. "Relax yourself and do not struggle." His hands came up around old Hector's jaws from the rear. "Let go," he commanded, and the hard tow commenced. It was all footwork and their progress was very slow, but eventually they won through. As soon as he could stand erect in the mud the rescuer unceremoniously seized The Laird by the nape and dragged him high and dry up the bank.

"Now, then," he gasped, "I guess you can take care of yourself. Better go over to the mill and warm yourself in the furnace room. I've got to hurry away to 'phone the Tyee people to swing a dozen spare links of their log boom across the river and stop those runaways before they escape into the Bight and go to sea on the ebb."

He was gone on the instant, clambering up the bank through the bushes that grew to the water's edge; old Hector could hear his breath coming in great gasps as he ran.

"Must know that chap, whoever he is," The Laird soliloquized. "Think he's worked for me some time or other. His voice sounds mighty familiar. Well—I'll look him up in the morning."

He climbed after his rescuer and stumbled away through the murk toward Darrow's mill. Arrived here he found the fireman banking the fires in the furnace room and while he warmed himself one of them summoned Bert Darrow from the mill office.

"Bert," The Laird explained, "I'd be obliged if you'd run me home in more or less of a hurry in your closed car. I've been in the drink," and he related the tale of his recent adventures. "Your raftsman saved my life," he concluded. "Who is he? It was so dark before he got to me I couldn't see his face distinctly, but I think he's a young fellow who used to work for me. I know because his voice sounds so very familiar."

"He's a new hand, I believe. Lives in Port Agnew. I believe your man Daney can tell you his name," Darrow replied evasively.

"I'll ask Daney. The man was gone before I could recover enough breath to thank him for my life. Sorry to have messed up your boom, Bert, but we'll stop the runaways at my boom and I'll have them towed back in the morning. And I'll have a man put in a new boom-stick and connect it up again."

Bert Darrow set him down at the Tyee Lumber Company's office, and wet and chilled as he was, The Laird went at once to Mr. Daney's office. The latter was just leaving it for the day when The Laird appeared.

"Andrew," the latter began briskly. "I drove that fast motor-boat at full speed into Darrow's boom on my way down river this evening; I've had a ducking and only for Darrow's raftsman you'd be closing down the mill to-morrow out of respect to my memory. Bert Darrow says their raftsman used to work for us; he's a new man with them and Bert says you know who he is."

"I think I know the man," Mr. Daney replied thoughtfully. "He's been with them about three weeks; resigned our employ a couple of weeks before that. I was sorry to lose him. He's a good man."

"I grant it, Andrew. He's the fastest, coolest hand that ever balanced a pike pole or rode a log. We cannot afford to let men like that fellow get away from us for the sake of a little extra pay. Get him back on the pay-roll, Andrew, and don't be small with him. I'll remember him handsomely at Christmas, and see that I do not forget this, Andrew. What is his name?"

"Let me think." Mr. Daney bent his head, tipped back his hat and massaged his brow before replying. "I think that when he worked for the Tyee Lumber Company he was known as Donald McKaye."

He looked up. The old Laird's face was ashen. "Thank you, Andrew," he managed to murmur presently. "Perhaps you'd better let Darrow keep him for a while. G—g—good-night!"

Outside, his chauffeur waited with his car. "Home—and be quick about it," he mumbled and crawled into the tonneau slowly and weakly. As the car rolled briskly up the high cliff road to The Dreamerie, the old man looked far below him to the little light that twinkled on the Sawdust Pile.

"She'll have his dinner cooked for him now and be waiting and watching for him," he thought.



XLV

Hector McKaye suffered that winter. He dwelt in Gethsemane, for he had incurred to his outcast son the greatest debt that one man can incur to another, and he could not publicly acknowledge the debt or hope to repay it in kind. By the time spring came his heart hunger was almost beyond control; there were times when, even against his will, he contemplated a reconciliation with Donald based on an acceptance of the latter's wife but with certain reservations. The Laird never quite got around to defining the reservation but in a vague way he felt that they should exist and that eventually Donald would come to a realization of the fact and help him define them.

Each Sunday during that period of wretchedness he saw his boy and Nan at church, although they no longer sat with Mr. Daney. From Reverend Tingley The Laird learned that Donald now had a pew of his own, and he wondered why. He knew his son had never been remotely religious and eventually he decided that, in his son's place, though he were the devil himself, he would do exactly as Donald had done. Damn a dog that carried a low head and a dead tail! It was the sign of the mongrel strain—curs always crept under the barn when beaten!

One Sunday in the latter part of May he observed that Nan came to church alone. He wondered if Donald was at home ill and a vague apprehension stabbed him; he longed to drop into step beside Nan as she left the church and ask her, but, of course, that was unthinkable. Nevertheless he wished he knew and that afternoon he spent the entire time on the terrace at The Dreamerie, searching the Sawdust Pile with his marine glasses, in the hope of seeing Donald moving about the little garden. But he did not see him, and that night his sleep was more troubled than usual.

On the following Sunday Nan was not accompanied by her husband either. The Laird decided, therefore, that Donald could not be very ill, otherwise Nan would not have left him home alone. This thought comforted him somewhat. During the week he thought frequently of telephoning up to Darrow and asking if they still had the same raftsman on the pay-roll, but his pride forbade this. So he drove up the river road one day and stopped his car among the trees on the bank of the river from the Darrow log boom. A tall, lively young fellow was leaping nimbly about on the logs, but so active was he that even at two hundred yards The Laird could not be certain this man was his son. He returned to Port Agnew more troubled and distressed than ever.

Mrs. McKaye and the girls had made three flying visits down to Port Agnew during the winter and The Laird had spent his week-ends in Seattle twice; otherwise, save for the servants, he was quite alone at The Dreamerie and this did not add to his happiness. Gradually the continued and inexplicable absence of Donald at Sunday service became an obsession with him; he could think of nothing else in his spare moments and even at times when it was imperative he should give all of his attention to important business matters, this eternal, damnable query continued to confront him. It went to bed with him and got up with him and under its steady relentless attrition he began to lose the look of robust health that set him off so well among men of his own age. His eyes took on a worried, restless gleam; he was irritable and in the mornings he frequently wore to the office the haggard appearance that speaks so accusingly of a sleepless night. He lost his appetite and in consequence he lost weight. Andrew Daney was greatly concerned about him, and one day, apropos of nothing, he demanded a bill of particulars.

"Oh, I daresay I'm getting old, Andrew," The Laird replied evasively.

"Worrying about the boy?"

It was a straight shot and old Hector was too inexpressibly weary to attempt to dodge it. He nodded sadly.

"Well, let us hope he'll come through all right, sir."

"Is he ill? What's wrong with him, Andrew? Man, I've been eating my heart out for months, wondering what it is, but you know the fix I'm in. I don't like to ask and not a soul in Port Agnew will discuss him with me."

"Why, there's nothing wrong with him that I'm aware of, sir. I spoke to Nan after services last Sunday and she read me a portion of his last letter. He was quite well at that time."

"W-wh-where is he, Andrew?"

"Somewhere in France. He's not allowed to tell."

"France? Good God, Andrew, not France!"

"Why not, may I ask? Of course he's in France. He enlisted as a private shortly after war was declared. Dirty Dan quit his job and went with him. They went over with the Fifth Marines. Do you mean to tell me this is news to you?" he added, frankly amazed.

"I do," old Hector mumbled brokenly. "Oh, Andrew man, this is terrible, terrible. I canna stand it, man." He sat down and covered his face with his trembling old hands.

"Why can't you? You wouldn't want him to sit at home and be a slacker, would you? And you wouldn't have a son of yours wait until the draft board took him by the ear and showed him his duty, would you?"

"If he's killed I'll nae get over it." The Laird commenced to weep childishly.

"Well, better men or at least men as fine, are paying that price for citizenship, Hector McKaye."

"But his wife, man? He was married. 'Twas not expected of him—"

"I believe his wife is more or less proud of him, sir. Her people have always followed the flag in some capacity."

"But how does she exist? Andrew Daney, if you're giving her the money—"

"If I am you have no right to ask impertinent questions about it. But I'm not."

"I never knew it, I never knew it," the old man complained bitterly. "Nobody tells me anything about my own son. I'm alone; I sit in the darkness, stifling with money—oh, Andrew, Andrew, I didn't say good-by to him! I let him go in sorrow and in anger."

"You may have time to cure all that. Go down to the Sawdust Pile, take the girl to your heart like a good father should and then cable the boy. That will square things beautifully."

Even in his great distress the stubborn old head was shaken emphatically. The Laird of Port Agnew was not yet ready to surrender.

Spring lengthened into summer and summer into fall. Quail piped in the logged-over lands and wild ducks whistled down through the timber and rested on the muddy bosom of the Skookum, but for the first time in forty years The Laird's setters remained in their kennels and his fowling pieces in their leather cases. To him the wonderful red and gold of the great Northern woods had lost the old allurement and he no longer thrilled when a ship of his fleet, homeward bound, dipped her house-flag far below him. He was slowly disintegrating.

Of late he had observed that Nan no longer came to church, so he assumed she had found the task of facing her world bravely one somewhat beyond her strength. A few months before, this realization would have proved a source of savage satisfaction to him, but time and suffering were working queer changes in his point of view. Now, although he told himself it served her right, he was sensible of a small feeling of sympathy for her and a large feeling of resentment against the conditions that had brought her into conflict with the world.

"I daresay," Andrew Daney remarked to him about Christmas time, "you haven't forgotten your resolve to do something handsome for that raftsman of Darrow's who saved your life last January. You told me to remind you of him at Christmas."

"I have not forgotten the incident," old Hector answered savagely.

"I think it might be a nice thing to do if you would send word to Nan, by me, that it will please you if she will consent to have your grandchild born in the company hospital. Otherwise, I imagine she will go to a Seattle hospital, and with doctors and nurses away to the war there's a chance she may not get the best of care."

"Do as you see fit," The Laird answered. He longed to evade the issue—he realized that Daney was crowding him always, setting traps for him, driving him relentlessly toward a reconciliation that was abhorrent to him. "I have no objection. She cannot afford the expense of a Seattle hospital, I daresay, and I do not desire to oppress her."

The following day Mr. Daney reported that Nan had declined with thanks his permission to enter the Tyee Lumber Company's hospital. As a soldier's wife she would be cared for without expense in the Base Hospital at Camp Lewis, less than a day's journey distant.

The Laird actually quivered when Daney broke this news to him. He was hurt—terribly hurt—but he dared not admit it. In January he learned through Mr. Daney that he was a grandfather to a nine-pound boy and that Nan planned to call the baby Caleb, after her father. For the first time in his life then, The Laird felt a pang of jealousy. While the child could never, by any possibility, be aught to him, nevertheless he felt that in the case of a male child a certain polite deference toward the infant's paternal ancestors was always commendable. At any rate, Caleb was Yankee and hateful.

"I am the twelfth of my line to be named Hector," he said presently—and Andrew Daney with difficulty repressed a roar of maniac laughter. Instead he said soberly.

"The child's playing in hard luck as matters stand; it would be adding insult to injury to call him Hector McKaye, Thirteenth. Isn't that why you named your son Donald?"

The Laird pretended not to hear this. Having been fired on from ambush, as it were, he immediately started discussing an order for some ship timbers for the Emergency Fleet Corporation. When he retired to his own office, however, he locked the door and wept with sympathy for his son, so far away and in the shadow of death upon the occasion of the birth of his first son.



XLVI

Spring came. Overhead the wild geese flew in long wedges, honking, into the North, and The Laird remembered how Donald, as a boy, used to shoot at them with a rifle as they passed over The Dreamerie. Their honking wakened echoes in his heart. With the winter's supply of logs now gone, logging operations commenced in the woods with renewed vigor, the river teemed with rafts, the shouts of the rivermen echoing from bank to bank. Both Tyee and Darrow were getting out spruce for the government and ship timbers for the wooden shipyards along San Francisco Bay.

Business had never been so brisk, and with the addition of the war duties that came to every community leader, The Laird found some surcease from his heart-hunger. Mrs. McKaye and the girls had returned to The Dreamerie, now that Donald's marriage had ceased to interest anybody but themselves, so old Hector was not so lonely. But—the flag was flying again at the Sawdust Pile, each day of toil for The Laird was never complete without an eager search of the casualty lists published in the Seattle papers.

Spring lengthened into summer. The Marine casualties at Belleau Wood and Chateau-Thierry appalled The Laird; he read that twenty survivors of a charge that started two hundred and fifty strong across the wheat field at Bouresches had taken Bouresches and held it against three hundred of the enemy—led by Sergeant Daniel J. O'Leary, of Port Agnew, Washington! Good old Dirty Dan! At last he was finding a legitimate outlet for his talents! He would get the Distinguished Service Cross for that! The Laird wondered what Donald would receive. It would be terrible should Dirty Dan return with the Cross and Donald McKaye without it.

In September, Donald appeared in the Casualty List as slightly wounded. Also, he was a first lieutenant now. The Laird breathed easier, for his son would be out of it for a few months, no doubt. It was a severe punishment, however, not to be able to discuss his gallant son with anybody. At home his dignity and a firm adherence to his previous announcement that his son's name should never be mentioned in his presence, forbade a discussion with Mrs. McKaye and the girls; and when he weakly sparred for an opportunity with Andrew Daney, that stupid creature declined to rise to the bait, or even admit that he knew of Donald's commission. When told of it, he expressed neither surprise nor approval.

In November, the great influenza epidemic came to Port Agnew and took heavy toll. It brought to The Laird a newer, a more formidable depression. What if Donald's son should catch it and die, and Donald be deprived of the sight of his first-born? What if Nan should succumb to an attack of it while her husband was in France? In that event would Donald forgive and forget and come home to The Dreamerie? Somehow, old Hector had his doubts.

For a long time now, he had felt a great urge to see Donald's son. He had a curiosity to discover whether the child favored the McKayes or the Brents. If it favored the McKayes—well, perhaps he might make some provision for its future in his will, and in order to prove himself a good sport he would leave an equal sum to Nan's illegitimate child, which Donald had formally adopted a few days after his marriage to Nan. Why make fish of one and fowl of the other? he thought. They were both McKayes now, in the sight of the law, and for aught he knew to the contrary they were full brothers!

The child became an obsession with him. He longed to weigh it and compare its weight with that of Donald's at the same age—he had the ancient record in an old memorandum book at the office. He speculated on whether it had blue eyes or brown, whether it was a blond or a brunette. He wondered if Daney had seen it and wondering, at length he asked. Yes, Mr. Daney had seen the youngster several times, but beyond that statement he would not go and The Laird's dignity forbade too direct a probe. He longed to throttle Mr. Daney, who he now regarded as the most unsympathetic, prosaic, dull-witted old ass imaginable.

He wanted to see that child! The desire to do so never left him during his waking hours and he dreamed of the child at night. So in the end he yielded and went down to the Sawdust Pile, under cover of darkness, his intention being to sneak up to the little house and endeavor to catch a glimpse of the child through the window. He was enraged to discover, however, that Nan maintained a belligerent Airedale that refused, like all good Airedales, to waste his time and dignity in useless barking. He growled—once, and The Laird knew he meant it, so he got out of that yard in a hurry.

He was in a fine rage as he walked back to the mill office and got into his car. Curse the dog! Was he to be deprived of a glimpse of his grandson by an insensate brute of a dog? He'd be damned if he was! He'd shoot the animal first—no, that would never do. Nan would come out and he would be discovered. Moreover, what right had he to shoot anybody's dog until it attacked him? The thing to do would be to put some strychnine on a piece of meat—no, no, that would never do. The person who would poison a dog—any kind of a dog—

It was a good dog. The animal certainly was acting within its legal rights. Yes, he knew now where Nan had gotten it. The dog had belonged to First Sergeant Daniel J. O'Leary of the Fifth Marines; he had doubtless given it to Nan to keep for him when he went to the war; The Laird knew Dan thought a great deal of that dog. His name was Jerry and he had aided Dirty Dan in more than one bar-room battle.

Jerry, like his master, like the master of the woman he protected, was a Devil-dog, and one simply cannot kill a soldier's dog for doing a soldier's duty. Should Jerry charge there would be no stopping him until he was killed, so The Laird saw very clearly that there was but one course open to him. If he marched through that gate and straight to the door, as if he meant business, as if he had a moral and legal right to be there on business, Jerry would understand and permit him to pass. But if he snooped in, like a thief in the night, and peered in at a window—

"I wish I had a suit of Fifteenth Century armour," he thought. "Then Jerry, you could chew on my leg and be damned to you. You're a silent dog and I could have a good look while you were wrecking your teeth."

He went back to the Sawdust Pile at dusk the next evening, hoping Jerry would be absent upon some unlawful private business, but when he approached the gate slowly and noiselessly Jerry spoke up softly from within and practically said: "Get out or take the consequences."

The following night, however, The Laird was prepared for Jerry. He did not halt at the dog's preliminary warning but advanced and rattled the gate a little. Immediately Jerry came to the gate and stood just inside growling in his throat, so The Laird thrust an atomizer through the palings and deluged Jerry's hairy countenance with a fine cloud of spirits of ammonia. He had once tried that trick on a savage bulldog in which he desired to inculcate some respect for his person, and had succeeded beyond his most sanguine expectations. Therefore, since desperate circumstances always require desperate measures, the memory of that ancient victory had moved him to attempt a similar embarrassment of the dog Jerry.

But Jerry was a devil-dog. He had been raised and trained by Dirty Dan O'Leary and in company with that interesting anthropoid he had been through many stormy passages. Long before, he had learned that the offensive frequently wins—the defensive never. It is probable that he wept as he sniffed the awful stuff, but if he did they were tears of rage.

Jerry's first move was to stand on his head and cover his face with his paws. Then he did several back flips and wailed aloud in his misery and woe, his yelps of distress quite filling the empyrean. But only for the space of a few seconds. Recovering his customary aplomb he made a flying leap for the top of the gate, his yelps now succeeded by ambitious growls—and in self-defense The Laird was forced to spray him again as he clung momentarily on top of the palings. With a sob Jerry dropped back and buried his nose in the dust, while The Laird beat a hurried retreat into the darkness, for he had lost all confidence in his efforts to inculcate in Jerry an humble and contrite spirit.

He could hear rapid footsteps inside the little house; then the door opened and in the light that streamed from within he was indistinctly visible to Nan as she stood in the doorway.

"Jerry!" he heard her call. "Good dog! What's the matter? After him, Jerry. Go get him, Jerry!" She ran to the gate and opened it for the dog, who darted through, but paused again to run his afflicted nose in the dust and roll a couple of times. Apparently he felt that there was no great hurry; his quarry could not escape him. It is probable, also, that he was more or less confused and not quite certain which direction the enemy had taken, for Jerry's sense of smell was temporarily suspended and his eyes blinded by tears; certain his language was not at all what it should have been.

The Laird ran blindly, apprehensively, but for a very short distance. Suddenly he bumped into something quite solid, which closed around him viciously. "Halt, damn you," a commanding voice cried.

Despite his years, Hector McKaye was no weakling, and in the knowledge that he could not afford to be captured and discovered, seemingly he slipped forty years from his shoulders. Once more he was a lumberjack, the top dog of his district—and he proceeded to fight like one. His old arms rained punches on the midriff of the man who held him and he knew they stung cruelly, for at every punch the man grunted and strove to clinch him tighter and smother the next blow. "Let go me or I'll kill you," The Laird panted. "Man dinna drive me to it." He ceased his rain of blows, grasped his adversary and tried to wrestle him down. He succeeded, but the man would not stay down. He wriggled out with amazing ease and had old Hector with his shoulders touching before The Laird's heaving chest and two terrible thumbs closed down on each of The Laird's eyes, with four powerful fingers clasping his face like talons. "Quit, or I'll squeeze your eyeballs out," a voice warned him.

The Laird's hand beat the ground beside him. He had surrendered to a master of his style of fighting. With something of the air of an expert, his conqueror ran a quick hand over him, seeking for weapons, and finding none, he grasped The Laird by the collar and jerked him to his feet. "Now, then, my hearty, I'll have a look at you," he said. "You'll explain why you're skulking around here and abusing that dog!"

The Laird quivered as he found himself being dragged toward the stream of light, in the center of which Nan Brent stood silhouetted. He could not afford this and he was not yet defeated.

"A thousand dollars if you let me go now," he panted. "I have the money in my pocket. Ask yon lass if I've done aught wrong."

His captor paused and seemed to consider this. "Make it ten thousand and I'll consider it," he whispered. "Leave it on the mail box just outside the Tyee Lumber Company's office at midnight to-morrow night."

"I'll do it—so help me God," The Laird promised frantically.

His son's voice spoke in his ear. "Dad! You low-down, worthless lovable old fraud!"

"My son! My son!" Old Hector's glad cry ended in a sob. "Oh, my sonny boy, my bonny lad! I canna stand it. I canna! Forgie me, lad, forgie me—and ask her to forgie me!" His old arms were around his son's neck and he was crying on Donald's shoulder, unashamed. "I was trying for a look at the bairn," he cried brokenly, "and 'twas a privilege God would nae gie me seeing that I came like a sneak and not like an honest man. The damned dog—he knew! Och, Donald, say ye forgie ye're auld faither. Say it, lad. Ma heart's breakin'."

"Why, bless your bare-shanked old Scotch soul, of course I forgive you. I never held any grudge, you know. I simply stood pat until you could see things through my eyes."

"Is that you, Donald?" Nan called.

"Aye, aye, sweetheart. Dad's here. He wants to know if you regard him as a particularly terrible old man. I think he's afraid you will refuse to let him look at Laird Hector, Thirteenth."

"Man, man," the old man urged, quite shocked at this casual greeting of a returned hero to his wife, "go to her, lad. She'll not relish favoritism."

"Oh, this isn't our first meeting, Dad. I got home yesterday. I have thirty days leave. They sent me home as an instructor in small arms practice and gave me a boost in rank. I was just up town for a beefsteak and I've lost the beefsteak battling with you."

The Laird wiped his eyes and got control of himself. Presently he said: "Keep that blessed dog off me," and started resolutely for the front gate. Without a moment's hesitation he folded Nan in his arms and kissed her. "Poor bairn," he whispered. "I've been cruel to you. Forgie me, daughter, if so be you can find it in your heart to be that generous. God knows, lass, I'll try to be worthy of you."

"Am I worthy of him?" she whispered, womanlike.

"Far more than his father is," he admitted humbly. "Damn the world and damn the people in it. You're a good girl, Nan. You always were a good girl—"

"But suppose she wasn't—always?" Donald queried gently. "Is that going to make any difference—to you?"

"I don't care what she was before you married her. I haven't thought about that for a long time the way I used to think about it. I built The Dreamerie for you and the girl you'd marry and I—I accept her unconditionally, my son, and thank God she has the charity to accept an old Pharisee like me for a father-in-law."

Donald slipped his arm around Nan's waist, and started with her toward the door. "Tag along, father," he suggested, "and Nan will show you a prize grandson."

At the door, Nan paused. "Do you think, father McKaye," she queried, "that the remainder of the family will think as you do?"

"I fear not," he replied sadly. "But then, you haven't married the family. They'll accept you or keep out of Port Agnew; at any rate they'll never bother you, my dear. I think," he added grimly, "that I may find a way to make them treat you with civility at least."

"He's a pretty good old sport after all, isn't he, Nan?" her husband suggested.

"I'll tell the world he is," she answered archly, employing the A.E.F. slang she had already learned from Donald. She linked her arm in old Hector's and steered him down the hall to the living-room. "Your grandson is in there," she said, and opening the door she gently propelled him into the room.



XLVII

Nan was right. His grandson was there, but strange to relate he was seated, as naked as Venus (save for a diaper) on his grandmother's lap.

Hector McKaye paused and glared at his wife.

"Damn it, Nellie," he roared, "what the devil do you mean by this?"

"I'm tired of being an old fool, Hector," she replied meekly, and held the baby up for his inspection.

"It's time you were," he growled. "Come here, you young rascal till I heft you. By the gods of war, he's a McKaye!" He hugged the squirming youngster to his heart and continued to glare at his wife as if she were a hardened criminal. "Why didn't you tell me you felt yourself slipping?" he demanded. "Out with it, Nellie."

"There will be no post-mortems," Nan interdicted. "Mother McKaye and Elizabeth and Jane and I patched up our difficulties when Donald came home yesterday. How we did it or what transpired before we did it, doesn't matter, you dear old snooper."

"What? Elizabeth and Jane? Unconditional surrender?"

She nodded smilingly and The Laird admitted his entire willingness to be—jiggered. Finally, having inspected his grandson, he turned for an equally minute inspection of his soldier son under the lamplight.

"Three service stripes and one wound stripe," he murmured. "And you're not crippled, boy dear?"

"Do I fight like one? Hector, man, those punches of yours would have destroyed a battalion of cripples. Oh, you old false-alarm! Honestly, Dad, you're the most awful dub imaginable. And trying to bribe me into permitting you to escape—what the deuce have you been monkeying with? You reek of ammonia—here, go away from my son. You're poison."

The Laird ignored him. "What's that ribbon?" he demanded.

"Distinguished Service Cross."

"You must have bought it in a pawnshop. And that thing?"

"Croix de Guerre."

"And that red one?"

"Legion d'Honneur."

A pause. "What did Dirty Dan get, son?"

"The one thing in the world he thought he despised. The Congressional Medal of Honor for valor in saving the life of a British colonel, who, by the way, happens to be an Orangeman. When he discovered it he wanted to bayonet the colonel and I won the Croix de Guerre for stopping him."

"Oh, cease your nonsense, Donald," his wife urged, "and tell your father and mother something. I think they are entitled to the news now."

"Yes, Nan, I think they are. Listen, folks. Now that you've all been nice enough to be human beings and accept my wife at her face value, I have a surprise for you. On the day when Nan married the father of my adopted son, he waited until the officiating minister had signed the marriage license and attested that he had performed the ceremony; then while the minister's attention was on something else, he took possession of the license and put it in his overcoat pocket. Later he and Nan drove to a restaurant for luncheon and the overcoat with the license in the pocket was stolen, from the automobile. The thief pawned the coat later and the pawnbroker discovered the license in the pocket after the thief had departed. The following day the fellow was arrested in the act of stealing another overcoat; the pawnbroker read of the arrest and remembered he had loaned five dollars on an overcoat to a man who gave the same name this thief gave to the police. So the pawnbroker—"

"I am not interested, my son. I require no proofs."

"Thank you for that, father. But you're entitled to them and you're going to get them. The pawnbroker found on the inside lining of the inner breast pocket of the overcoat the tag which all tailors sew there when, they make the garment. This tag bore the name of the owner of the overcoat, his address and the date of delivery of the overcoat."

"Now, the pawnbroker noticed that the man who owned the overcoat was not the person named in the marriage license. Also he noticed that the marriage license was attested by a minister but that it had not been recorded by the state board of health, as required by law—and the pawnbroker was aware that marriage licenses are not permitted, by law, to come into the possession of the contracting parties until the fact that they have been legally married has been duly recorded on the evidence of the marriage—which is, of course, the marriage license."

"Why didn't the idiot send the license back to the minister who had performed the ceremony?" The Laird demanded. "Then this tangle would never have occurred."

"He says he thought of that, but he was suspicious. It was barely possible that the officiating clergyman had connived at the theft of the license from his desk, so the pawnbroker, who doubtless possesses the instincts of an amateur detective, resolved to get the license into the hands of Nan Brent direct. Before doing so, however, he wrote to the man named in the license and sent his letter to the address therein given. In the course of time that letter was returned by the post-office department with the notation that the location of the addressee was unknown. The pawnbroker then wrote to the man whose name appeared on the tailor's tag in the overcoat, and promptly received a reply. Yes, an overcoat had been stolen from his automobile on a certain date. He described the overcoat and stated that the marriage license of a friend of his might be found in the breast pocket, provided the thief had not removed it. If the license was there he would thank the pawnbroker to forward it to him. He enclosed a check to redeem the overcoat and pay the cost of forwarding it to him by parcel post, insured. The pawnbroker had that check photographed before cashing it and he forwarded the overcoat but retained the marriage license, for he was more than ever convinced that things were not as they should have been.

"His next move was to write Miss Nan Brent, at Port Agnew, Washington, informing her of the circumstances and advising her that he had her marriage certificate. This letter reached Port Agnew at the time Nan was living in San Francisco, and her father received it. He merely scratched out Port Agnew, Washington, and substituted for that address: 'Care of—— using Nan's married name, Altamont Apartments, San Francisco.'

"By the time that letter reached San Francisco Nan had left that address, but since she planned a brief absence only, she left no forwarding address for her mail. That was the time she came north to visit her father and in Seattle she discovered that her supposed husband was already married. I have told you, father, and you have doubtless told mother, Nan's reasons for refusing to disclose this man's identity at that time.

"Of course Nan did not return to San Francisco, but evidently her husband did and at their apartment he found this letter addressed to Nan. He opened it, and immediately set out for San Jose to call upon the pawnbroker and gain possession of the marriage license. Unknown to him, however, his lines were all tangled and the pawnbroker told him frankly he was a fraud and declined to give him the license. Finally the pawnbroker tried a bluff and declared that if the man did not get out of his place of business he would have him arrested as a bigamist—and the fellow fled.

"A month or two later the pawnbroker was in San Francisco so he called at the Altamont Apartments to deliver the license in person, only to discover that the person he sought had departed and that her address was unknown. So he wrote Nan again, using her married name and addressed her at Port Agnew, Washington. You will remember, of course, that at this time Nan's marriage was not known to Port Agnew, she had kept it secret. Naturally the postmaster here did not know anybody by that name, and in due course, when the letter remained unclaimed he did not bother to advertise it but returned it to the sender."

"It doesn't seem possible," Mrs. McKaye declared, quite pop-eyed with excitement.

"It was possible enough," her son continued drily. "Well, the bewildered pawnbroker thrust the license away in his desk, and awaited the next move of the man in the case. But he never moved, and after a while the pawnbroker forgot he had the license. And the minister was dead. One day, in cleaning out his desk he came across the accumulated papers in the case and it occurred to him to write the state board of health and explain the situation. Promptly he received a letter from the board informing him that inquiries had been made at the board of health office for a certified copy of the license, by Miss Nan Brent, of Port Agnew, Washington, and that the board had been unable to furnish such a certified copy. Immediately our obliging and intelligent pawnbroker, whose name, by the way, is Abraham Goldman, bundled up the marriage license, together with the carbon copy of the pawn ticket he had given the thief; a press clipping from the San Jose Mercury recounting the story of the capture of the thief; carbon copies of all his correspondence in the case, the original of all letters received, the photograph of the check—everything, in fact, to prove a most conclusive case through the medium of a well-ordered and amazing chain of optical and circumstantial evidence. This evidence he sent to Miss Brent, Port Agnew, Washington, and she received it about a week before I married her. Consequently, she was in position to prove to the most captious critic that she was a woman of undoubted virtue, the innocent victim of a scoundrel who had inveigled her into a bigamous marriage. Of course, in view of the fact that the man she went through a legal marriage ceremony with already had a wife living, Nan's marriage to him was illegal—how do you express it? Ipso facto or per se? In the eyes of the law she had never been married; the man in the case was legally debarred from contracting another marriage. The worst that could possibly be said of Nan was that she played in mighty hard luck."

"In the name of heaven, why did you not tell me this the day you married her?" The Laird demanded wrathfully.

"I didn't know it the day I married her. She was curious enough to want to see how game I was. She wanted to be certain I truly loved her, I think—and in view of her former experience I do not blame her for it. It pleased you a whole lot, didn't it, honey?" he added, turning to Nan, "when I married you on faith?"

"But why didn't you tell us after you had discovered it, Donald?" Mrs. McKaye interrupted. "That was not kind of you, my son."

"Well," he answered soberly, "in the case of you and the girls I didn't think you deserved it. I kept hoping you and the girls would confess to Dad that you telephoned Nan to come back to Port Agnew that time I was sick with typhoid—"

"Eh? What's that?" The Laird sat up bristling.

Mrs. McKaye flushed scarlet and seemed on the verge of tears. Donald went to her and took her in his arms. "Awfully sorry to have to peach on you, old dear," he continued. "Do not think Nan told on you, Mother. She didn't. I figured it all out by myself. However, as I started to remark, I expected you would confess and that your confession would start a family riot, in the midst of it I knew father would rise up and declare himself. I give you my word, Dad, that for two weeks before I went to work up at Darrow I watched and waited all day long for you to come down here and tell Nan it was a bet and that we'd play it as it lay."

Old Hector gritted his teeth and waged his head sorrowfully. "Nellie," he warned his trembling wife, "this is what comes of a lack of confidence between man and wife."

She flared up at that. "Hush, you hypocrite. At least I haven't snooped around here trying to poison dogs and kill people when I was discovered playing Peeping Tom. A pretty figure you've cut throughout this entire affair. Didn't I beg you not to be hard on our poor boy?"

"Yes, you had better lay low, Father," Donald warned him. "You've been married long enough to know that if you start anything with a woman she'll put it all over you. We will, therefore, forget Mother's error and concentrate on you. Remember the night I dragged you ashore at Darrow's log boom? Well, permit me to tell you that you're a pretty heavy tow and long before my feet struck bottom I figured on two Widows McKaye. If I'd had to swim twenty feet further I would have lost out. Really, I thought you'd come through after that."

"I would if you'd waited a bit," old Hector protested miserably. "You ought to know I never do things in a hurry."

"Well, I do, Dad, but all the same I grew weary waiting for you. Then I made up my mind I'd never tell you about Nan until you and Mother and the girls had completely reversed yourselves and taken Nan for the woman she is and not the woman you once thought she was."

"Well, you've won, haven't you?" The Laird's voice was very husky.

"Yes, I have; and it's a sweet victory, I assure you."

"Then shut up. Shut up, I tell you."

"All right! I'm through—forever."

The Laird bent his beetling brows upon Nan. "And you?" he demanded. "Have you finished?"

She came to him and laid her soft cheek against his. "You funny old man," she whispered. "Did you ever hear that I had begun?"

"Well, nae, I have not—now that you mention it. And, by the way, my dear! Referring to my grandson's half-brother?"

"Yes."

"I understand he's a McKaye."

"Yes, Donald has legally adopted him."

"Well, then, I'll accept him as an adopted grandson, my dear. I think there'll be money enough for everybody. But about this scalawag of a man that fathered him. I'll have to know who he is. We have a suit of zebra clothing waiting for him, my dear."

"No, you haven't, Father McKaye. My boy's father is never going to be a convict. That man has other children, too."

"I'm going to have a glass frame made and in it I'm going to arrange photographic reproductions of all the documents in Nan's case," Donald stated. "The history of the case will all be there, then, with the exception, of course, of the name of the man. In deference to Nan's desires I will omit that. Then I'll have that case screwed into the wall of the post-office lobby where all Port Agnew can see and understand—"

"Nellie," The Laird interrupted, "please stop fiddling with that baby and dress him. Daughter, get my other grandson ready, and you, Donald, run over to the mill office. My car is standing there. Bring it here and we'll all go home to The Dreamerie—yes, and tell Daney to come up and help me empty a bottle to—to—to my additional family. He'll bring his wife, of course, but then we must endure the bitter with the sweet. Good old file, Daney. None better."

Donald put on his cap and departed. As the front gate closed behind him Hector McKaye sprang up and hurried out of the house after him. "Hey, there, son," he called into the darkness, "What was that you said about a glass case?"

Donald returned and repeated the statement of his plan.

"And you're going to the trouble of explaining to this sorry world," the old man cried sharply. "Man, the longest day she lives there'll be brutes that will say 'twas old man McKaye's money that framed an alibi for her.' Son, no man or woman was ever so pure that some hypocrite didn't tread 'em under foot like dust and regard them as such. Lad, your wife will always be dust to some folks, but—we're kindred to her—so what do we care? We understand. Do not explain to the damned Pharisees. They wouldn't understand. Hang that thing in the post-office lobby and some superior person will quote Shakespeare, and say: 'Methinks the lady doth protest too much.'"

"Then you would advise me to tell the world to go to—"

"Exactly, sonny, exactly."

THE END