gear. They were old men, human driftwood, beached in their declining
years, crabbed and sour, looking always backward with unconscious
regret.

Vin Ferrara was away with the _Bluebird_, still plying his fish venture.
Dolly and Norman Gower were married, and Dolly was back on the Knob in
the middle of Squitty Island, keeping house for her husband and Uncle
Peter and Long Tom Spence while they burrowed in the earth to uncover a
copper-bearing lead that promised a modest fortune for all three. Peter
Ferrara's house at the Cove stood empty and deserted in the spring sun.

People had to shift, to grasp opportunities as they were presented,
MacRae knew. They could not take root and stand still in one spot like
the great Douglas firs. But he missed the familiar voices, the sight of
friendly faces. He had nothing but his own thoughts to keep him company.
A man of twenty-five, a young and lusty animal of abounding vitality,
needs more than his own reflections to fill his days. Denied the outlet
of purposeful work in which to release pent-up energy, MacRae brooded
over shadows, suffered periods of unaccountable depression. Nature had
not designed him for either a hermit or a celibate. Something in him
cried out for affection, for companionship, for a woman's tenderness
bestowed unequivocally. The mating instinct was driving him, as it drove
the birds. But its urge was not the general, unspecified longing which
turns a man's eyes upon any desirable woman. Very clearly, imperiously,
this dominant instinct in MacRae had centered upon Betty Gower.

He was at war with his instincts. His mind stipulated that he could not
have her without a revolutionary overturning of his convictions,
inhibitions, soundly made and passionately cherished plans of reprisal
for old injustices. That peculiar tenacity of idea and purpose which was