* * * * *

About the time Jack MacRae with his burden of venison drew near his own dooryard, Betty Gower came out upon the winter-sodden lawn before their cottage and having crossed it ran lightly up the steps to the wide porch.  From there she saw her father standing on the Point.  She called to him.  At her hail he came trudging to the house.  Betty was piling wood in the living-room fireplace when he came in.

“I was beginning to worry about you,” he said.

“The wind got too much for me,” she answered, “so I put the boat on the beach a mile or so along and walked home.”

Gower drew a chair up to the fire.

“Blaze feels good,” he remarked.  “There’s a chill in this winter air.”

Betty made no comment.

“Getting lonesome?” he inquired after a minute.  “It seems to me you’ve been restless the last day or two.  Want to go back to town, Betty?”

“I wonder why we come here and stay and stay, out of reach of everything and everybody?” she said at last.

“Blest if I know,” Gower answered casually.  “Except that we like to.  It’s a restful place, isn’t it?  You work harder at having a good time in town than I ever did making money.  Well, we don’t have to be hermits unless we like.  We’ll go back to mother and the giddy whirl to-morrow, if you like.”

“We might as well, I think,” she said absently.

For a minute neither spoke.  The fire blazed up in a roaring flame.  Raindrops slashed suddenly against the windows out of a storm-cloud driven up by the wind.  Betty turned her eyes on her father.

“Did you ever do anything to Jack MacRae that would give him reason to hate you?” she asked bluntly.

Gower shook his head without troubling to look at her.  He kept his face steadfastly to the fire.

“No,” he said.  “The other way about, if anything.  He put a crimp in me last season.”

“I remember you said you were going to smash him,” she said thoughtfully.

“Did I?” he made answer in an indifferent tone.  “Well, I might.  And then again I might not.  He may do the smashing.  He’s a harder proposition than I figured he would be, in several ways.”

“That isn’t it,” Betty said, as if to herself.  “Then you must have had some trouble with his father—­long ago.  Something that hurt him enough for him to pass a grudge on to Jack.  What was it, daddy?  Anything real?”

“Jack, eh?” Gower passed over the direct question.  “You must be getting on.  Have you been seeing much of that young man lately?”

“What does that matter?” Betty returned impatiently.  “Of course I see him.  Is there any reason I shouldn’t?”

Gower picked up a brass poker.  He leaned forward, digging aimlessly at the fire, stirring up tiny cascades of sparks that were sucked glowing into the black chimney throat.

“Perhaps no reason that would strike you as valid,” he said slowly.  “Still—­I don’t know.  Do you like him?”