Ah, lad, if you only knew the terrible four years I've
paid for yon red-cedar!"

"You mean the suspense of not knowing how I was spending my
allowance?"

The Laird nodded.

"Curiosity killed a cat, my son, and I'm not as young as I used to
be."

"I had thought you'd have read the accounting in my eye. Take another
look, Hector McKaye." And Donald thrust his smiling countenance close
to his father's.

"I see naught in your eye but deviltry and jokes."

"None are so blind as they that will not see. If you see a joke, dad,
it's on you."

Old Hector blinked, then suddenly he sprang at his son, grasped him by
the shoulders, and backed him against the wall.

"Did you sell me that red cedar?" he demanded incredulously.

"Aye, mon; through an agent," Donald burred Scottishly. "A' did nae
ha' the heart tae stick my faither sae deep for a bit skulin'. A'm a
prood man, Hector McKaye; a'll nae take a grrand eeducashun at sic a
price. 'Tis nae Christian."

"Ah, my bonny bairn!" old Hector murmured happily, and drew his fine
son to his heart. "What a grand joke to play on your puir old father!
Och, mon, was there ever a lad like mine?"

"I knew you'd buy that timber for an investment if I offered it cheap
enough," Donald explained. "Besides, I owed you a poke. You wanted to
be certain you hadn't reared a jackass instead of a man, so you gave
me a hundred thousand dollars and stood by to see what I'd do with
it--didn't you, old Scotty?" Hector nodded a trifle guiltily. "Andrew
Daney wrote me you swore by all your Highland clan that the man who
sold you that red cedar was ripe for the fool-killer."

"Tush, tush!" The Laird protested. "You're getting personal now. I
dislike to appear inquisitive, but might I ask what you've done with
your two hundred thousand profit?"

"Well, you see, dad, I would have felt a trifle guilty had I kept it,
so I blew it all in on good, conservative United States bonds,
registered them in your name, and sent them to Daney to hide in your
vault at Port Agnew."

"Ah, well, red cedar or bonds, 'twill all come back to you some day,
sonny. The real profit's in the fun--"

"And the knowledge that I'm not a fool--eh, father?"

Father love supernal gleamed in The Laird's fine gray eyes.

"Were you a fool, my son, and all that I have in the world would cure
you if thrown into the Bight of Tyee, I'd gladly throw it and take up
my life where I began it--with pike-pole and peavy, double-bitted ax