"Hello, Dad. You looked lonely all by yourself in that big pew. Suppose we come up and sit with you next Sunday?" Old Hector paused and bent upon his son and Nan a terrible look. "Never speak to me again so long as you live," he replied in a low voice, and passed out of the church. Donald gazed after his broad erect figure and shook his head dolefully, as Mr. Daney fell into step beside him. "I told you so," he whispered. "Isn't it awful to be Scotch?" Nan inquired. "It is awful--on the Scotch," her husband assured her. "The dear old fraud gulped like a broken-hearted boy when I spoke to him. He'd rather be wrong than president." As they were walking home to the Sawdust Pile, Nan captured one of her husband's great fingers and swung it childishly. "I wish you didn't insist upon our going to church, sweetheart," she complained. "We're spoiling your father's Christianity." "Can't help it," he replied doggedly. "We're going to be thoroughbreds about this, no matter how much it hurts." She sighed. "And you're only half Scotch, Donald." XLIV By noon of the following day, Port Agnew was astounded by news brought by the crew of one of the light draft launches used to tow log rafts down the river. Donald McKaye was working for Darrow. He was their raftsman; he had been seen out on the log boom, pike pole in hand, shoving logs in to the endless chain elevator that drew them up to the seas. As might be imagined, Mrs. Daney was among the first to glean this information, and to her husband she repeated it at luncheon with every evidence of pleasure. "Tut, tut, woman," he replied carelessly, "this is no news to me. He told me yesterday after service that he had the job." The familiar wrinkle appeared for an instant on the end of her nose before she continued: "I wonder what The Laird thinks of that, Andrew?" "So do I," he parried skilfully. "Does he know it?" "There isn't a soul in Port Agnew with sufficient courage to tell him." "Why do you not tell him?" "None of my business. Besides, I do not hanker to see people squirm with suffering." She wrinkled her nose once more and was silent. As Mr. Daney had declared, there was none in Port Agnew possessed of sufficient hardihood to inform the Laird of his son's lowly status and it was three weeks before he discovered it for himself. He had gone up the river to one of his logging camps and the humor had seized him to make the trip in a fast little motor-boat he had given Donald at Christmas many years' before. He was busy adjusting the carburetor, after months of disuse, as he passed the Darrow log boom in the morning, so he failed to see his big son leaping across the logs, balancing himself skilfully with the pike pole. It was rather late when he started home and in the knowledge that darkness might find him well up the river he hurried.