erly reflective, was not the way to
carry on an inherited feud. He couldn't subject himself to that
peculiarly feminine attraction which Betty Gower bore like an aura and
nurse a grudge. In fact, he had no grudge against Betty Gower except
that she was the daughter of her father. And he couldn't explain to her
that he hated her father because of injustice and injury done before
either of them was born. In the genial atmosphere of the Granada that
sort of thing did not seem nearly so real, so vivid, as when he stood on
the cliffs of Squitty listening to the pound of the surf. Then it welled
up in him like a flood,--the resentment for all that Gower had made his
father suffer, for those thirty years of reprisal which had culminated
in reducing his patrimony to an old log house and a garden patch out of
all that wide sweep of land along the southern face of Squitty. He
looked at Betty and wished silently that she were,--well, Stubby
Abbott's sister. He could be as nice as he wanted to then. Whereupon,
instinctively feeling himself upon dangerous ground, he diverged from
the personal, talked without saying much until the music stopped and
they found seats. And when another partner claimed Betty, Jack as a
matter of courtesy had to rejoin his own party.

The affair broke up at length. MacRae slept late the next morning. By
the time he had dressed and breakfasted and taken a flying trip to Coal
Harbor to look over a forty-five-foot fish carrier which was advertised
for sale, he bethought himself of Stubby Abbott's request and, getting
on a car, rode out to the Abbott home. This was a roomy stone house
occupying a sightly corner in the West End,--that sharply defined
residential area of Vancouver which real estate agents unctuously speak
of as "select." There was half a block of ground in green lawn bordered
with rosebushes. The house itself was solid, homely, built for use, and
built to endure, all stone and heavy beams, wide windows and deep
porches, and a red tile roof lifting above the gray stone walls.

Stubby permitted MacRae a few minutes' exchange of pleasantries with his
mother and sister.

"I want to extract some useful information from this man," Stubby said
at length. "You can have at him later, Nell. He'll stay to dinner."

"How do you know he will?" Nelly demanded. "He hasn't said so, yet."

"Between you and me, he can't escape," Stubby said cheerfully and led
Jack away upstairs into a small cheerful room lin