brought you back east all this way?"

Weston admitted it, and the contractor fixed his eyes on him.

"Well," he said, "it seems that there's fishing and sailing to be
done, and I'm not quite sure about that major man. Guess he's always
had people to wait on him, and that doesn't tend to smartness in any
one. When my daughter and her friends go out on the lake, or up the
river, you'll go along with them."

This was, perhaps, a little hard on Major Kinnaird, but Weston to some
extent sympathized with his employer's point of view. The contractor
was not a sportsman as the term is generally understood, but he was a
man who could strip a gun, make or mend harness, or break a horse.
When he had gone shooting in his younger days it was usually to get
something to eat, and, as a rule, he obtained it, though he rent his
clothes or got wet to the waist in the process. He could not sail a
boat, but if he had been able to do so he would also in all
probability have been capable of building one. Stirling was a man who
had never depended very much on others, and could, if occasion arose,
dispense with their services. He recognized something of the same
resourcefulness in Weston, and, because of it, took kindly to him.

In the meanwhile the breeze had freshened, and the boat, slanting more
sharply, commenced to throw the spray all over her as she left the
shelter of the woods behind. She met the short, splashing head sea
with streaming bow, and the sliding froth crept farther and farther up
her lee deck as she smashed through it. Then as the water found its
way over the coaming and poured down into her, Stirling glanced at his
companion.

"Got all the sail she wants?" he asked. "Is she fit to stand much more
of it?"

"She should be safe with another plank in, but I was thinking of
taking some of the canvas off her now," said Weston.

Stirling hitched his twelve stone of flesh farther up to windward.

"Then," he said, "until she puts that plank in you can let her go."

A wisp of spray struck him in the face, but Weston, who saw the smile
in his eyes, was curiously satisfied. It suggested, in the first
place, an ample confidence in him, which was naturally gratifying, and
in the second, that Stirling in spite of his years could take a keen
pleasure in that particular form of the conflict between the great
material forces and man's nerve and skill. It is a conflict that goes
on everywhere in the newer lands.

For another hal