All these things were on Gower's side. He was impregnable. MacRae was
not a fool. Neither was he inclined to pessimism. Yet so far as he could
see, the croakers were not lying when they said that here at home the
war had made the rich richer and the poor poorer. It was painfully true
in his own case. He had given four years of himself to his country,
gained an honorable record, and lost everything else that was worth
having.

What he had lost in a material way he meant to get back. How, he had not
yet determined. His brain was busy with that problem. And the dying down
of his first keen resentment and grief over the death of his father, and
that dead father's message to him, merely hardened into a cold resolve
to pay off his father's debt to the Gowers and Mortons. MacRae ran true
to the traditions of his Highland blood when he lumped them all
together.

In this he was directed altogether by the promptings of emotion, and he
never questioned the justice of his attitude. But in the practical
adjustment of his life to conditions as he found them he adopted a
purely rational method.

He took stock of his resources. They were limited enough. A few hundred
dollars in back pay and demobilization gratuities; a sound body, now
that his injured eye was all but healed; an abounding confidence in
himself,--which he had earned the right to feel. That was all. Ambition
for place, power, wealth, he did not feel as an imperative urge. He
perceived the value and desirability of these things. Only he saw no
short straight road to any one of them.

For four years he had been fed, clothed, directed, master of his own