facing her.

"I never saw dad so thin and old-looking," he muttered. "Why, his hair
is nearly white. He's a wreck. How long has he been sick?"

"Four days," Dolly answered. "But he hasn't grown old and thin in four
days, Jack. He's been going downhill for months. Too much work. Too much
worry also, I think--out there around the Rock every morning at
daylight, every evening till dark. It hasn't been a good season for the
rowboats."

MacRae stirred uneasily in his chair. He didn't understand why his
father should have to drudge in a trolling boat. They had always fished
salmon, so far back as he could recall, but never of stark necessity. He
nursed his chin in his hand and thought. Mostly he thought with a
constricted feeling in his throat of how frail and old his father had
grown, the slow-smiling, slow-speaking man who had been father and
mother and chum to him since he was an urchin in knee breeches. He
recalled him at their parting on a Vancouver railway platform,--tall and
rugged, a lean, muscular, middle-aged man, bidding his son a restrained
farewell with a longing look in his eyes. Now he was a wasted shadow.
Jack MacRae shivered. He seemed to hear the sable angel's wing-beats
over the house.

He looked up at the girl at last.

"You're worn out, aren't you, Dolly?" he said. "Have you been caring for
him alone?"

"Uncle Peter helped," she answered. "But I've stayed up and worried, and