nnounced
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,