your resolve to do something handsome for that
raftsman of Darrow's who saved your life last January. You told me to
remind you of him at Christmas."

"I have not forgotten the incident," old Hector answered savagely.

"I think it might be a nice thing to do if you would send word to Nan,
by me, that it will please you if she will consent to have your
grandchild born in the company hospital. Otherwise, I imagine she will
go to a Seattle hospital, and with doctors and nurses away to the war
there's a chance she may not get the best of care."

"Do as you see fit," The Laird answered. He longed to evade the
issue--he realized that Daney was crowding him always, setting traps
for him, driving him relentlessly toward a reconciliation that was
abhorrent to him. "I have no objection. She cannot afford the expense
of a Seattle hospital, I daresay, and I do not desire to oppress her."

The following day Mr. Daney reported that Nan had declined with thanks
his permission to enter the Tyee Lumber Company's hospital. As a
soldier's wife she would be cared for without expense in the Base
Hospital at Camp Lewis, less than a day's journey distant.

The Laird actually quivered when Daney broke this news to him. He was
hurt--terribly hurt--but he dared not admit it. In January he learned
through Mr. Daney that he was a grandfather to a nine-pound boy and
that Nan planned to call the baby Caleb, after her father. For the
first time in his life then, The Laird felt a pang of jealousy. While
the child could never, by any possibility, be aught to him,
nevertheless he felt that in the case of a male child a certain polite
deference toward the infant's paternal ancestors was always
commendable. At any rate, Caleb was Yankee and hateful.

"I am the twelfth of my line to be named Hector," he said
presently--and Andrew Daney with difficulty repressed a roar of
maniac laughter. Instead he said soberly.

"The child's playing in hard luck as matters stand; it would be adding
insult to injury to call him Hector McKaye, Thirteenth. Isn't that why
you named your son Donald?"

The Laird pretended not to hear this. Having been fired on from
ambush, as it were, he immediately started discussing an order for
some ship timbers for the Emergency Fleet Corporation. When he retired
to his own office, however, he locked the door and wept with sympathy
for his son, so far away and in the shadow of death upon the occasion
of the birth of his first son.