himself ever saw or felt--except as I have been able to feel it
since I knew. You weren't satisfied with that. You had to keep on
throwing your weight against him for thirty years. You didn't even stop
when the war made everything seem different. You might have let up
then. We were doing our bit. But you didn't. You kept on until you had
deprived him of everything but the power to row around the Rock day
after day and take a few salmon in order to live. You made a pauper of
him and sat here gloating over it. It preyed on his mind to think that I
should come back from France and find myself a beggar because he was
unable to cope with you. He lived his life without whimpering to me,
except to say he did not like you. He only wrote this down for me to
read--when he began to feel that he would never see me again--the
reasons why he had failed in everything, lost everything. When I pieced
out the story, from the day you used your pike pole to knock down a man
whose fighting hands were tied by a promise to a woman he loved, from
then till the last cold-blooded maneuver by which you got this land of
ours, I hated you, and I set out to pay you back in your own coin.

"But," MacRae continued after a momentary hesitation, "that is not what
I came here to say. Talk--talk's cheap. I would rather not talk about
these things, or think of them, now. I want to buy this land from you if
you are willing to sell. That's all."

Gower scarcely seemed to hear him. He was nursing his heavy chin with
one hand, looking at MacRae with a curious concentration, looking at him
and seeing something far beyond.

"Hell; it is a true indictment, up to a certain point," he said at last.
"What a curse misunderstanding is--and pride! By God, I have envied your
father, MacRae, many a time. I struck him an ugly blow once. Yes. I was
young and hot-headed, and I was burning with jealousy. But I did him a
good turn at that, I think. I--oh, well, maybe you wouldn't understand.
I suppose you wouldn't believe me if I say I didn't swoop down on him
every time I got a chance; that I didn't bushwhack--no matter if he
believed I did."

"No?" MacRae said incredulously. "You didn't break up a logging venture
on the Claha when he had a chance to make a stake? You didn't show your
fine Italian hand in that marble quarry undertaking on Texada? Nor other
things that I could name as he named them. Why crawl now? It doesn't
matter. I'm not swinging a club over your head."