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