ed a less mediocre woman or had he raised his daughters as he had
his son. The girls' upbringing had been left entirely in their
mother's hands. Not so with young Donald, however--wherefore it was a
byword in Port Agnew that Donald was his father's son, a veritable
chip of the old block.

By some uncanny alchemy, hard cash appears to soften the heads and
relax the muscles of rich men's sons--at least, such had been old
Hector's observation, and on the instant that he first gazed upon the
face of his son, there had been born in him a mighty resolve that,
come what might, he would not have it said of him that he had made a
fool of his boy. And throughout the glad years of his fatherhood, with
the stern piety of his race and his faith, he had knelt night and
morning beside his bed and prayed his God to help him not to make a
fool of Donald--to keep Donald from making a fool of himself.

When Donald entered Princeton, his father decided upon an experiment.
He had raised his boy right, and trained him for the race of life, and
now The Laird felt that, like a thoroughbred horse, his son faced the
barrier. Would he make the run, or would he, in the parlance of the
sporting world, "dog it?" Would his four years at a great American
university make of him a better man, or would he degenerate into a
snob and a drone?

With characteristic courage, The Laird decided to give him ample
opportunity to become either, for, as old Hector remarked to Andrew
Daney: "If the lad's the McKaye I think he is, nothing can harm him.
On the other hand, if I'm mistaken, I want to know it in time, for my
money and my Port Agnew Lumber Company is a trust, and if he can't
handle it, I'll leave it to the men who can--who've helped me create
it--and Donald shall earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. Tools,"
he added, "belong to the men that can use them."

When Donald started East for college, old Hector accompanied him as
far as Seattle. On the way up, there was some man-talk between them.
In his youth, old Hector had not been an angel, which is to state that
he had been a lumberjack. He knew men and the passions that beset
them--particularly when they are young and lusty--and he was far from
being a prude. He expected his son to raise a certain amount of wild
oats; nay, he desired it, for full well he knew that when the fires
of youth are quenched, they are liable to flare disgracefully in
middle life or old age.

"Never pig it, my son," was h