Then he wired Andrew Daney a long telegram of instructions and a stiff
raise in salary.

"The boy has a head like a tar-bucket," he concluded. "Everything I
ever put into it has stuck. We are going to frolic round the world
together, and we will be home when we get back."




IV


Donald was twenty-four and The Laird fifty-eight when the pair
returned from their frolic round the world--Donald to take up this
father's labors, The Laird to lay them aside and retire to The
Dreamerie and the books he had accumulated against this happy
afterglow of a busy and fruitful life.

Donald's mother and sisters were at The Dreamerie the night the father
and son arrived. Of late years, they had spent less and less of their
time there. The Laird had never protested, for he could not blame them
for wearying of a little backwoods sawmill town like Port Agnew.

With his ability to think calmly, clearly, and unselfishly, he had
long since realized that eventually his girls must marry; now
Elizabeth was twenty-six and Jane twenty-eight, and Mrs. McKaye was
beginning to be greatly concerned for their future. Since The Laird
had built The Dreamerie in opposition to their wishes, they had spent
less than six months in each year at Port Agnew. And these visits had