round stomach--less round by far than it
had been two months earlier--shook with silent laughter. His eyes
twinkled. His thick, stubby fingers drummed on the chair arm.

MacRae's face grew hot. He recognized the unfinished sentence as one of
his own, words he had flung in Gower's face not so long since. If that
was the way of it he could save his breath. He turned silently.

"Wait."

He faced about at the changed quality of Gower's tone. The amused
expression had vanished. Gower leaned forward a little. There was
something very like appeal in his expression. MacRae was suddenly
conscious of facing a still different man,--an oldish, fat man with
thinning hair and tired, wistful eyes.

"I just happened to think of what you said to me not long ago," Gower
explained. "It struck me as funny. But that isn't how I feel. If you
want this land you can have it. Take a chair. Sit down. I want to talk
to you."

"There is nothing the matter with my legs," MacRae said shortly. "I do
want this land. I will pay you the price you paid for it, in cash, when
you execute a legal transfer. Is that satisfactory?"

"What about this house?" Gower asked casually. "It's worth something,
isn't it?"

"Not to me," MacRae replied. "I don't want the house. You can take it
away with you, if you like."

Gower looked at him thoughtfully.

"The Scotch," he said, "cherish a grudge like a family heirloom."

"Perhaps they do," MacRae answered. "Why not? If you knock a man down
you don't expect him to jump up and shake hands with you. You had your
inning. It was a long one."

"I wonder," Gower said slowly, "why old Donald MacRae kept his mouth
closed to you about trouble between us until he was ready to die?"

"How do you know he did that?" MacRae demanded harshly.

"The night you came to ask for the _Arrow_ to take him to town you had
no such feeling against me as you have had since," Gower said. "I know
you didn't. You wouldn't have come if you had. I cut no figure in your
eyes, one way or the other, until after he was dead. So he must have
told you at the very last. What did he tell you? Why did he have to pass
that old poison on to another generation?"

"Why shouldn't he?" MacRae demanded. "You made his life a failure. You
put a scar on his face--I can remember when I was a youngster wondering
how he got that mark--I remember how it stood like a ridge across his
cheek bone when he was dead. You put a scar upon his soul that no one
but