“How soon, boss?”

“Immediately.”  Anticipating a refusal, Donald stepped closer to the mulatto and looked him sternly in the eye.

“We-ll, is dat so?” the yellow rascal drawled.  “So youh-all’s de new la’rd, eh?  Well, ah’m de king o’ de Sawdust Pile, an’ mah house is mah castle.  Git dat, Mistah La’rd?”

Donald turned toward Nan.

“I’m going to have trouble here, Nan.  Please go in the house.”

“Proceed,” she replied simply.  “I have a most unwomanly and unladylike desire to see that beast manhandled.”

Donald turned, in time to go under a sizzling right-hand blow from the mulatto and come up with a right uppercut to the ugly, freckled face and a left rip to the mulatto’s midriff.  The fellow grunted, and a spasm of pain crossed his countenance.  “You yellow dog!” Donald muttered, and flattened his nose far flatter than his mammy had ever wiped it.  The enemy promptly backed away and covered; a hearty thump in the solar plexus made him uncover, and under a rain of blows on the chin and jaw, he sprawled unconscious on the ground.

Donald left him lying there and stepped to the door of the shack.  The frightened drab within spat curses at him.

“Pack and go!” he ordered.  “Within the hour, I’m going to purge the Sawdust Pile with fire; if you stay in the house, you’ll burn with it.”

She was ready in ten minutes.  Three more of her kind occupying an adjacent shack begged to be allowed time in which to load their personal possessions in an express-wagon.  The four Greeks were just about to set out for a day’s fishing, but, having witnessed the defeat of the mulatto bully, the fever of the hegira seized them also.  They loaded their effects in the fishing-launch, and chugged away up river to Darrow, crying curses upon the young laird of Tyee and promising reprisal.

Donald waited until the last of the refugees had departed before setting fire to the shacks.  Then he stood by old Caleb Brent’s house, a circle of filled buckets around him, and watched in case the wind should suddenly shift and shower sparks upon the roof.  In half an hour the Sawdust Pile had reverted to its old status and a throng of curious townspeople who, attracted by the flames and smoke, had clustered outside Caleb Brent’s gate to watch Donald at work, finally despaired of particulars and scattered when they saw Donald and Nan Brent enter the house.

Caleb Brent, looking twenty years older than when Donald had seen him last, sat in an easy chair by the window, gazing with lack-luster eyes out across the bight.  He was hopelessly crippled with rheumatism, and his sea-blue eyes still held the same lost-dog wistfulness.

“Hello, Caleb!” Donald greeted him cordially.  “I’ve just cleaned up the Sawdust Pile for you.  You’re back in undisputed possession again.”

He shook hands with old Caleb and sat down in a chair which Nan drew up for him.