at," Stubby grinned. "In the first
place, the machinery and equipment is worth that much in the open
market. And if I get it, we'll either make a deal for collecting the
fish, or you can take a half-interest in the plant at the ground-floor
price. Either way, we can make it a profitable investment for both of
us."

"You really think Gower is in a bad way?" Jack asked reflectively.

"I know it," Stubby replied emphatically. "Oh, I don't mean to say that
abject poverty is staring him in the face, or anything like that. But it
looks to me as if he had lost a barrel of money somehow and was anxious
to get Folly Bay off his hands before it sets him further in the hole.
You could make Folly Bay pay big dividends. So could I. But so long as
you cover his ground with carriers, every day he operates is a dead
loss. I haven't much sympathy for him. He has made a fortune out of that
place and those fishermen and spent it making a big splurge in town.
Anyway, his wife has all kinds of kale, so we should worry about old
Horace A."

MacRae lit a cigarette and listened to the flow of Stubby's talk, with
part of his mind mulling over this information about Horace Gower. He
wondered if that was why Robbin-Steele was so keen on getting a contract
for those Squitty bluebacks, why Hurley of the Northwest wanted to make
a deal for salmon; if they reckoned that Gower had ceased to be a factor
and that Jack MacRae held the Squitty Island business in the hollow of
his hand. MacRae smiled to himself. If that were true it was an
advantage he meant to hold for his own good and the good of all those
hard-driven men who labored at the fishing. In a time that was
economically awry MacRae's sympathy turned more to those whose struggle
was to make a living, or a little more if they could, than to men who
already had more than they needed, men who had no use for more money
except to pile it up, to keep piling it up. MacRae was neither an
idealist nor a philanthropic dreamer. But he knew the under dog of the
great industrial scramble. In his own business he would go out of his
way to add another hundred dollars a year to a fisherman's earnings. He
did not know quite clearly why he felt like that. It was more or less
instinctive. He expected to make money out of his business, he was eager
to make money, but he saw very clearly that it was only in and through
the tireless labor of the fishermen that he could reap a profit. And he
was young enough to be