bright morning. He was merely
sitting more or less quiescent on his log, nursing vagrant impressions,
letting the sun bathe him.

He was not even conscious of trespassing on Horace Gower's land. When
he thought of it, of course he realized that this was legally so. But
the legal fact had no reality for MacRae. Between the Cove and Point
Old, for a mile back into the dusky woods, he felt free to come and go
as he chose. He had always believed and understood and felt that area to
be his, and he still held to that old impression. There was not a foot
of that six hundred acres that he had not explored alone, with his
father, with Dolly Ferrara, season after season. He had gone barefoot
over the rocks, dug clams on the beaches, fished trout in the little
streams, hunted deer and grouse in the thickets, as far back as he could
remember. He had loved the cliffs and the sea, the woods around the Cove
with an affection bred in use and occupancy, confirmed by the sense of
inviolate possession. Old things are dear, if a man has once loved them.
They remain so. The aura of beloved familiarity clings to them long
after they have passed into alien hands. When MacRae thought of this and
turned his eyes upon this noble sweep of land and forest which his
father had claimed for his own from the wilderness, it was as if some
one had deprived him of an eye or an arm by trickery and unfair
advantage.

He was not glooming over such things this rare morning which had come
like a benediction after ten days of rain and wind. He was sitting on
his log bareheaded, filled with a passive content rare in his recent
experience.

From this perch, in the idle wandering of his gaze, his eyes at length
rested upon Peter Ferrara's house. He saw a man and a woman come out of
the front door and stand for a minute or two on the steps. He could not
recognize the man at the distance, but he could guess. The man presently
walked away around the end of the Cove, MacRae perceived that his guess
was correct, for Norman Gower came out on the brow of the cliff that
bordered the south side of the Cove. He appeared a short distance away,
walking slowly, his eyes on the Cove and Peter Ferrara's house. He did
not see MacRae till he was quite close and glanced that way.

"Hello, MacRae," he said.

"How d' do," Jack answered. There was no cordiality in his tone. If he
had any desire at that moment it was not for speech with Norman Gower,
but rather a desire that Gow