dylike
desire to see that beast manhandled."

Donald turned, in time to go under a sizzling right-hand blow from the
mulatto and come up with a right uppercut to the ugly, freckled face
and a left rip to the mulatto's midriff. The fellow grunted, and a
spasm of pain crossed his countenance. "You yellow dog!" Donald
muttered, and flattened his nose far flatter than his mammy had ever
wiped it. The enemy promptly backed away and covered; a hearty thump
in the solar plexus made him uncover, and under a rain of blows on the
chin and jaw, he sprawled unconscious on the ground.

Donald left him lying there and stepped to the door of the shack. The
frightened drab within spat curses at him.

"Pack and go!" he ordered. "Within the hour, I'm going to purge the
Sawdust Pile with fire; if you stay in the house, you'll burn with
it."

She was ready in ten minutes. Three more of her kind occupying an
adjacent shack begged to be allowed time in which to load their
personal possessions in an express-wagon. The four Greeks were just
about to set out for a day's fishing, but, having witnessed the defeat
of the mulatto bully, the fever of the hegira seized them also. They
loaded their effects in the fishing-launch, and chugged away up river
to Darrow, crying curses upon the young laird of Tyee and promising
reprisal.

Donald waited until the last of the refugees had departed before
setting fire to the shacks. Then he stood by old Caleb Brent's house,
a circle of filled buckets around him, and watched in case the wind
should suddenly shift and shower sparks upon the roof. In half an hour
the Sawdust Pile had reverted to its old status and a throng of
curious townspeople who, attracted by the flames and smoke, had
clustered outside Caleb Brent's gate to watch Donald at work, finally
despaired of particulars and scattered when they saw Donald and Nan
Brent enter the house.

Caleb Brent, looking twenty years older than when Donald had seen him
last, sat in an easy chair by the window, gazing with lack-luster eyes
out across the bight. He was hopelessly crippled with rheumatism, and
his sea-blue eyes still held the same lost-dog wistfulness.

"Hello, Caleb!" Donald greeted him cordially. "I've just cleaned up
the Sawdust Pile for you. You're back in undisputed possession again."

He shook hands with old Caleb and sat down in a chair which Nan drew
up for him.

"It's good of you to call, Mr. Donald," the old man piped. "But isn't