, half-defiant jerk that reminded The Laird of a
similar greeting customarily extended by squinch-owls.

Nan was not particularly clean, and her one-piece dress, of heavy blue
navy-uniform cloth was old and worn and spotted. Over this dress she
wore a boy's coarse red-worsted sweater with white-pearl buttons. The
skin of her thin neck was fine and creamy; the calves, of her bare
brown legs were shapely, her feet small, her ankles dainty.

With the quick eye of the student of character, this man, proud of his
own ancient lineage for all his humble beginning, noted that her
hands, though brown and uncared-for, were small and dimpled, with
long, delicate fingers. She had sea-blue eyes like Caleb Brent's,
and, like his, they were sad and wistful; a frowsy wilderness of
golden hair, very fine and held in confinement at the nape of her neck
by the simple expedient of a piece of twine, showed all too plainly
the lack of a mother's care.

The Laird returned Nan's courtesy with a patronizing inclination of
his head.

"Your granddaughter, I presume?" he addressed Caleb Brent.

"No; my daughter, sir. I was forty when I married, and Nan came ten
years later. She's thirteen now, and her mother's been dead ten
years."

Hector McKaye had an idea that the departed mother was probably just
as well, if not better, off, free of the battle for existence which
appeared to confront this futile old man and his elf of a daughter. He
glanced at the embryo shack under construction and, comparing it with
his own beautiful home on Tyee Head, he turned toward the bight. A
short distance off the bulkhead, he observed a staunch forty-foot
motor-cruiser at anchor. She would have been the better for a coat of
paint; undeniably she was of a piece with Caleb Brent and Nan, for,
like them, The Laird had never seen her before.

"Yours?" he queried.

"Yes, sir."

"You arrived in her, then?"

"I did, sir. Nan and I came down from Bremerton in her, sir."

The Laird owned many ships, and he noted the slurring of the "sir" as
only an old sailor can slur it. And there was a naval base at
Bremerton.

"You're an old sailor, aren't you, Brent?" he pursued.

"Yes, sir. I was retired a chief petty officer, sir. Thirty years'
continuous service, sir--and I was in the mercantile marine at
sixteen. I've served my time as a shipwright. Am--am I intruding here,
sir?"

The Laird smiled, and followed the smile with a brief chuckle.

"Well--yes and no. I