treatment--perhaps even in spite of that--his father's life was a matter
of hours. Again he and Dolly Ferrara tiptoed out to the room where the
fire glowed on the hearth. MacRae sat thinking. Dusk was coming on, the
long twilight shortened by the overcast sky. MacRae glowered at the
fire. The girl watched him expectantly.

"I have an idea," he said at last. "It's worth trying."

He opened his bag and, taking out the wedge-shaped cap of the birdmen,
set it on his head and went out. He took the same path he had followed
home. On top of the cliff he stopped to look down on Squitty Cove. In a
camp or two ashore the supper fires of the rowboat trollers were
burning. Through the narrow entrance the gasboats were chugging in to
anchorage, one close upon the heels of another.

MacRae considered the power trollers. He shook his head.

"Too slow," he muttered. "Too small. No place to lay him only a doghouse
cabin and a fish hold."

He strode away along the cliffs. It was dark now. But he had ranged all
that end of Squitty in daylight and dark, in sun and storm, for years,
and the old instinctive sense of direction, of location, had not
deserted him. In a little while he came out abreast of Cradle Bay. The
Gower house, all brightly gleaming windows, loomed near. He struck down
through the dead fern, over the unfenced lawn.

Halfway across that he stopped. A piano broke out loudly. Figures
flittered by the windows, gliding, turning. MacRae hesitated. He had
come reluctantly, driven by his father's great need, uneasily conscious