for
the future, until presently, these matters having been discussed
fully, there fell a silence between them, to be broken presently by
The Laird.

"I'm wondering, Donald, if you haven't met some bonny lass you'd like
to bring home to Port Agnew. You realize, of course, that there's room
on Tyee Head for another Dreamerie, although I built this one for
you--and her."

"There'll be no other house on Tyee Head, father," Donald answered,
"unless you care to build one for mother and the girls. The wife that
I'll bring home to Port Agnew will not object to my father in my
house." He smiled and added, "You're not at all hard to get along
with, you know."

The Laird's eyes glistened.

"Have you found her yet, my son?"

Donald shook his head in negation.

"Then look for her," old Hector ordered. "I have no doubt that, when
you find her, she'll be worthy of you. I'm at an age now when a man
looks no longer into the future but dwells in the past, and it's hard
for me to think of you, big man that you are, as anything save a wee
laddie trotting at my side. Now, if I had a grandson--"

When, presently, Donald bade him good-night, Hector McKaye turned off
the lights and sat in the dark, gazing down across the moonlit Bight
of Tyee to the sparks that flew upward from the stacks of his sawmill
in Port Agnew, for they were running a night shift. And, as he gazed,
he thrilled, with a fierce pride and a joy that was almost pain, in
the knowledge that he had reared a merchant prince for this, his
principality of Tyee.

V

Hector McKaye had always leaned toward the notion that he could run
Port Agnew better than a mayor and a town council, in addition to
deriving some fun out of it; consequently, Port Agnew had never been
incorporated. And this was an issue it was not deemed wise to press,
for The Tyee Lumber Company owned every house and lot in town, and
Hector McKaye owned every share of stock in the Tyee Lumber Company.

If he was a sort of feudal baron, he was a gentle and kindly one;
large building-plots, pretty little bungalows, cheap rentals, and no
taxation constituted a social condition that few desired to change. As
these few developed and The Laird discovered them, their positions in
his employ, were forfeited, their rents raised, or their leases
canceled, and presently Port Agnew knew them no more. He paid fair
wages, worked his men nine hours, and employed none but naturalized
Americans, with a noticeab