Rod had come down the path with a club bag in one hand, talking amiably with his father. He had seen his trunk put aboard the _Haida_. Mrs. Wall, Laska, Isabel, Miss Sherburne, Grove, and three or four other unattached young men and women who made up the house party were on the float to see him off. They filled the quiet upper bay with light talk and low laughter. Rod stood by the deck rail chaffering with them. But his eye missed one figure. He had not seen Phil since breakfast. Already the engineer was priming the big motor. He could hear the hissing of air through open petcocks. And old Phil hadn't come down to say "good-by, kid." Rod's glance wandered to Grove, standing by Laska Wall, a fine upright figure of a man in white flannels. And he wondered idly why this elder son of the house should be like flint to his brothers' steel without ever seeming aware of the hostile undercurrents he so often aroused. Or perhaps he simply did not care. Perhaps he felt such a complete assurance that the liking and loyalty of younger brothers was a negligible thing. Then, as the first deep bark of the exhaust waked a hollow echo in Mermaid Bay, Phil came down with long, quick strides, dressed in a gray suit, a bag in his hand. There was a quick exchange of casual exclamations, a shaking of hands. Phil stepped aboard. "All right," he called to the deck hand. "Cast off." The _Haida_ backed clear, gathered way as she turned into the slackening tide. She slid past the Gillard light, lonely and untended on its steel pillar. The narrow gorge of a canoe pass opened behind the island. From a rocky point south of the pass and the light a trail that Rod knew ran to Oliver Thorn's house. And as Rod's eyes swept the shore, he marked a figure on the highest point of this beach trail. He waved his hat. Something white fluttered like a pennant in answer. Then the cruiser's way cut off Gillard, the red roof of Hawk's Nest, and Mary Thorn on the trail. They vanished behind the low, timbered hills of Valdez, and Rod turned to his brother. Phil sat on a skylight, his hands clasped over one knee, his eyes on the streaming wake. But Rod knew he was not looking at the bubbles in the wash, or at anything concretely visible. It was too much the concentrated look a man bestows upon things afar, remote, but vivid in the eye of the mind. "Cheer up," he said abruptly. "The worst is yet to come." "I wonder?" Phil replied absently. A faint smile replaced that set expression. "I suppose the worst always is ahead--only unseen." "What's up?" Rod demanded. "Why this last minute dash, and the abstracted air?" Phil stared at the deck. "Do I show such outward signs of inner disturbance?" he inquired whimsically. "If I do it was a wise move to leave. I didn't think I gave myself away openly as a bad loser." Rod said nothing. He waited. He knew his brother.