Poor Mans Rock | Page 6

from astonishment to anger and broke at last into a smile of sheer amusement. He jiggled the coin, staring at it thoughtfully. Then he faced about on the jerseyed youth about to dip his blades.
"Smith," he said, "I suppose if I heaved this silver dollar out into the chuck you'd think I was crazy."
The youth only stared at him.
"You don't object to tips, do you, Smith?" the man in the mackinaw inquired.
"Gee, no," the boy observed. "Ain't you got no use for money?"
"Not this kind. You take it and buy smokes."
He flipped the dollar into the dinghy. It fell clinking on the slatted floor and the youth salvaged it, looked it over, put it in his pocket.
"Gee," he said. "Any time a guy hands me money, I keep it, believe me."
His gaze rested curiously on the man with the patch over his eye. His familiar grin faded. He touched his cap.
"Thank y', sir."
He heaved on his oars. The boat slid out. The man stood watching, hands deep in his pockets. A displeased look replaced the amused smile as his glance rested a second on the rich man's toy of polished mahogany and shining brass. Then he turned to look again at the house up the slope and found the girl at his elbow.
He did not know if she had overheard him, and he did not at the moment care. He met her glance with one as impersonal as her own.
"I'm afraid I must apologize for my father," she said simply. "I hope you aren't offended. It was awfully good of you to bring us ashore."
"That's quite all right," he answered casually. "Why should I be offended? When a roughneck does something for you, it's proper to hand him some of your loose change. Perfectly natural."
"But you aren't anything of the sort," she said frankly. "I feel sure you resent being tipped for an act of courtesy. It was very thoughtless of papa."
"Some people are so used to greasing their way with money that they'll hand St. Peter a ten-dollar bill when they pass the heavenly gates," he observed. "But it really doesn't matter. Tell me something. Whose house is that, and how long has it been there?"
"Ours," she answered. "Two years. We stay here a good deal in the summer."
"Ours, I daresay, means Horace A. Gower," he remarked. "Pardon my curiosity, but you see I used to know this place rather well. I've been away for some time. Things seem to have changed a bit."
"You're just back from overseas?" she asked quickly.
He nodded. She looked at him with livelier interest.
"I'm no wounded hero," he forestalled the inevitable question. "I merely happened to get a splinter of wood in one eye, so I have leave until it gets well."
"If you are merely on leave, why are you not in uniform?" she asked quickly, in a puzzled tone.
"I am," he replied shortly. "Only it is covered up with overalls and mackinaw. Well, I must be off. Good-by, Miss Gower."
He pushed his boat off the beach, rowed to the opposite side of the bay, and hauled the small craft up over a log. Then he took his bag in hand and climbed the rise that lifted to the backbone of Point Old. Halfway up he turned to look briefly backward over beach and yacht and house, up the veranda steps of which the girl in the blue sweater was now climbing.
"It's queer," he muttered.
He went on. In another minute he was on the ridge. The Gulf opened out, a dead dull gray. The skies were hidden behind drab clouds. The air was clammy, cold, hushed, as if the god of storms were gathering his breath for a great effort.
And Jack MacRae himself, when he topped the height which gave clear vision for many miles of shore and sea, drew a deep breath and halted for a long look at many familiar things.
He had been gone nearly four years. It seemed to him but yesterday that he left. The picture was unchanged,--save for that white cottage in its square of green. He stared at that with a doubtful expression, then his uncovered eye came back to the long sweep of the Gulf, to the brown cliffs spreading away in a ragged line along a kelp-strewn shore. He put down the bag and seated himself on a mossy rock close by a stunted, leaning fir and stared about him like a man who has come a great way to see something and means to look his fill.
CHAPTER II
His Own Country
Squitty Island lies in the Gulf of Georgia midway between a mainland made of mountains like the Alps, the Andes, and the Himalayas all jumbled together and all rising sheer from the sea, and the low delta-like shore of Vancouver Island. Southward from Squitty the Gulf