“Look around,” said he, “and tell me what you think of the House of Fyfe.”

There it stood, snow-white, broad-porched, a new house reared upon the old stone foundation she remembered.  The noon sun struck flashing on the windows.  About it spread the living green of the grassy square, behind that towered the massive, darker-hued background of the forest.

“Oh,” she exclaimed.  “What wizard of construction did the work. That was why you fussed so long over those plans in Los Angeles.  I thought it was to be this summer or maybe next winter.  I never dreamed you were having it built right away.”

“Well, isn’t it rather nice to come home to?” he observed.

“It’s dear.  A homey looking place,” she answered.  “A beautiful site, and the house fits,—­that white and the red tiles.  Is the big stone fireplace in the living room, Jack?”

“Yes, and one in pretty nearly every other room besides,” he nodded.  “Wood fires are cheerful.”

The Panther turned her nose shoreward at Fyfe’s word.

“I wondered about that foundation the first time I saw it,” Stella confessed, “whether you built it, and why it was never finished.  There was moss over the stones in places.  And that lawn wasn’t made in a single season.  I know, because dad had a country place once, and he was raging around two or three summers because the land was so hard to get well-grassed.”

“No, I didn’t build the foundation or make the lawn,” Fyfe told her.  “I merely kept it in shape.  A man named Hale owned the land that takes in the bay and the point when I first came to the lake.  He was going to be married.  I knew him pretty well.  But it was tough going those days.  He was in the hole on some of his timber, and he and his girl kept waiting.  Meantime he cleared and graded that little hill, sowed it to grass, and laid the foundation.  He was about to start building when he was killed.  A falling tree caught him.  I bought in his land and the timber limits that lie back of it.  That’s how the foundation came there.”

“It’s a wonder it didn’t grow up wild,” Stella mused.  “How long ago was that?”

“About five years,” Fyfe said.  “I kept the grass trimmed.  It didn’t seem right to let the brush overrun it after the poor devil put that labor of love on it.  It always seemed to me that it should be kept smooth and green, and that there should be a big, roomy bungalow there.  You see my hunch was correct, too.”

She looked up at him in some wonder.  She hadn’t accustomed herself to associating Jack Fyfe with actions based on pure sentiment.  He was too intensely masculine, solid, practical, impassive.  He did not seem to realize even that sentiment had influenced him in this.  He discussed it too matter-of-factly for that.  She wondered what became of the bride-to-be.  But that Fyfe could not tell her.

“Hale showed me her picture once,” he said, “but I never saw her.  Oh, I suppose she’s married some other fellow long ago.  Hale was a good sort.  He was out-lucked, that’s all.”