times when the sea was calm paddling a canoe or rowing alongshore.  Also he had glimpses of the thickset figure of Horace Gower walking along the cliffs.  MacRae avoided both.  That was easy enough, since he knew every nook and bush and gully on that end of the island.  But the mere sight of Gower was an irritation.  He resented the man’s presence.  It affected him like a challenge.  It set him always pondering ways and means to secure ownership of those acres again and forever bar Gower from walking along those cliffs with that masterful air of possession.  Only a profound distaste for running away from anything kept him from quitting the island while they were there, those two, one of whom he was growing to hate far beyond the original provocation, the other whom he loved,—­for MacRae admitted reluctantly, resentfully, that he did love Betty, and he was afraid of where that emotion might lead him.  He recognized the astonishing power of passion.  It troubled him, stirred up an amazing conflict at times between his reason and his impulses.  He fell back always upon the conclusion that love was an irrational thing anyway, that it should not be permitted to upset a man’s logical plan of existence.  But he was never very sure that this conclusion would stand a practical test.

The southern end of Squitty was not of such vast scope that two people could roam here and there without sometime coming face to face, particularly when these two were a man and a woman, driven by a spirit of restlessness to lonely wanderings.  MacRae went into the woods with his rifle one day in search of venison.  He wounded a buck, followed him down a long canyon, and killed his game within sight of the sea.  He took the carcass by a leg and dragged it through the bright green salal brush.  As he stepped out of a screening thicket on to driftwood piled by storm and tide, he saw a rowboat hauled up on the shingle above reach of short, steep breakers, and a second glance showed him Betty sitting on a log close by, looking at him.

“Stormbound?” he asked her.

“Yes.  I was rowing and the wind came up.”

She rose and came over to look at the dead deer.

“What beautiful animals they are!” she said.  “Isn’t it a pity to kill them?”

“It’s a pity, too, to kill cattle and sheep and pigs, to haul fish by the gills out of the sea,” MacRae replied; “to trap marten and mink and fox and beaver and bear for their skins.  But men must eat and women must wear furs.”

“How horribly logical you are,” Betty murmured.  “You make a natural sympathy appear wishy-washy sentimentalism.”