that Donald MacRae, had he been cognizant, would have forbidden harshly
the request his son had come to make. Jack MacRae had the feeling that
his father would rather die than have him ask anything of Horace Gower.

He did not know why. He had never been told why. All he knew was that
his father would have nothing to do with Gower, never mentioned the name
voluntarily, let his catch of salmon rot on the beach before he would
sell to a Gower cannery boat,--and had enjoined upon his son the same
aloofness from all things Gower. Once, in answer to young Jack's curious
question, his natural "why," Donald MacRae had said:

"I knew the man long before you were born, Johnny. I don't like him. I
despise him. Neither I nor any of mine shall ever truck and traffic with
him and his. When you are a man and can understand, I shall tell you
more of this."

But he had never told. It had never been a mooted point. Jack MacRae
knew Horace Gower only as a short, stout, elderly man of wealth and
consequence, a power in the salmon trade. He knew a little more of the
Gower clan now than he did before the war. MacRae had gone overseas with
the Seventh Battalion. His company commander had been Horace Gower's
son. Certain aspects of that young man had not heightened MacRae's
esteem for the Gower family. Moreover, he resented this elaborate summer
home of Gower's standing on land he had always known to be theirs, the
MacRaes'. That puzzled him, as well as affronted his sense of ownership.

But these things, he told himself, were for the moment beside the point.
He felt his father's life trembling in the balance. He wanted to see
affectionate, prideful recognition light up those gray-blue eyes again,
even if briefly. He had come six thousand miles to cheer the old man