g your assistant
to carry out my wishes, I'm thinking." The Laird's voice was calm
enough; apparently he had himself under perfect control, but--the
Blue-Bonnets-coming-over-the-Border look was in his fierce gray eyes;
under his bushy iron-gray brows they burned like campfires in twin
caverns at night. His arms, bowed belligerently, hung tense at his
side, his great hands opened and closed, a little to the fore; he
licked his lips and in the brief silence that followed ere Mr. Daney
got up and started fumbling with the combination to the great vault in
the corner, old Hector's breath came in short snorts. He turned and,
still in the same attitude, watched Daney while the latter twirled and
fumbled and twirled. Poor man! He knew The Laird's baleful glance was
boring into his back and for the life of him he could not remember the
combination he had used for thirty years.

Suddenly he abandoned all pretense and turned savagely on The Laird.

"Get out of my office," he yelled. "I work for you, Hector McKaye, but
I give you value received and in this office I'm king and be damned to
you." His voice rose to a shrill, childish treble that presaged tears
of rage. "You'll be sorry for this, you hard-hearted man. Please God
I'll live to see the day your dirty Scotch pride will be humbled and
you'll go to that wonderful boy and his wife and plead for
forgiveness. Why, you poor, pitiful, pusillanimous old pachyderm, if
the boy has dishonored you he has honored himself. He's a gallant
young gentleman, that's what he is. He has more guts than a bear. He's
_married_ the girl, damn you--and that's more than you would have done
at his age. Ah, don't talk to me! We were young together and I know
the game you played forty years ago with the girl at the Rat
Portage--yes, you--you with your youth and your hot passions--turning
your big proud back on your peculiar personal god to wallow in sin and
enjoy it."

"But I--I was a single man then," The Laird sputtered, almost
inarticulate with fury and astonishment.

"He was a single man yesterday but he's a married man to-day. And she
loves him. She adores him. You can see it in her eyes when his name is
mentioned. And she had no _reason_ to behave herself, had she? She has
behaved herself for three long years, but did she win anybody's
approbation for doing it? I'm telling you a masterful man like him
might have had her without the wedding ring, for love's sake, if he'd
cared to play a wait