ood looking over the porch rail down on the sea where the _Blanco_
swung at her anchor chain. There seemed nothing more to say. Yet he was
aware of Gower's eyes upon him with something akin to expectancy. An
uncertain smile flitted across MacRae's face.

"This has sort of put me on my beam ends," he said, using a sailor's
phrase. "Don't you feel as if I'd rather done you up these two seasons?"

Gower's heavy features lightened with a grimace of amusement.

"Well," he said, "you certainly cost me a lot of money, one way and
another. But you had the nerve to go at it--and you used better judgment
of men and conditions than anybody has manifested in the salmon business
lately, unless it's young Abbott. So I suppose you are entitled to win
on your merits. By the way, there is one condition tacked to selling you
this ranch. I hesitated about bringing it up at first. I would like to
keep this cottage and a strip of ground a hundred and fifty feet wide
running down to the beach."

"All right," MacRae agreed. "We can arrange that later. I'll come
again."

He set foot on the porch steps. Then he turned back. A faint flush stole
up in his sun-browned face. He held out his hand.

"Shall we cry quits?" he asked. "Shall we shake hands and forget it?"

Gower rose to his feet. He did not say anything, but the grip in his
thick, stubby fingers almost made Jack MacRae wince,--and he was a
strong-handed man himself.

"I'm glad you came to-day," Gower said huskily. "Come again--soon."

He stood on the porch and watched MacRae stride down to the beach and
put off in his dinghy. Then he took out a handkerchief and blew his nose
with a tremendous amount of unnecessary noise and gesture. There was
something suspiciously like moisture brightening his eyes.

But when he saw MacRae stand in the dinghy alongside the _Blanco_ and
speak briefly to his men, then row in under Point Old behind Poor Man's
Rock which the tide was slowly baring, when he climbed up over the Point
and took the path along the cliff edge, that suspicious brightness in
Gower's keen old eyes was replaced by a twinkle. He sat down in his
grass chair and hummed a little tune, the while one slippered foot kept
time, rat-a-pat, on the floor of the porch.

CHAPTER XXI

As it Was in the Beginning

MacRae followed the path along the cliffs. He did not look for Betty.
His mind was on something else, engrossed in considerations which had
little to do with love. I