only a decent share.  He did not sit behind a mahogany desk in town and set the price of fish.  These men had labored a long time under the weighty heel of a controlled industry, and they were thankful for a new dispensation.  It gave MacRae a pleasant feeling to know this.  It gave him also something of a contempt for Gower, who had sat tight with a virtual monopoly for ten years and along with his profits had earned the distrust and dislike of a body of men who might as easily have been loyal laborers in his watery vineyards,—­if he had not used his power to hold them to the most meager return they could wring from the sea.

He came home to the house at Squitty Cove with some odds and ends from town shops to make it more comfortable, flooring to replace the old, worn boards, a rug or two, pictures that caught his fancy, new cushions for the big chairs old Donald MacRae had fashioned by hand years before, a banjo to pick at, and a great box of books which he had promised to read some day when he had time.  And he knew he would have time through long winter evenings when the land was drenched with rain, when the storm winds howled in the swaying firs and the sea beat clamorously along the cliffs.  He would sit with his feet to a glowing fire and read books.

He did, for a time.  When late November laid down a constant barrage of rain and the cloud battalions marched and countermarched along the coast, MacRae had settled down.  He had no present care upon his shoulders.  Although he presumed himself to be resting, he was far from idle.  He found many ways of occupying himself about the old place.  It was his pleasure that the old log house should be neat within and without, the yard clean, the garden restored to order.  It had suffered a season’s neglect.  He remedied that with a little labor and a little money, wishing, as the place took on a sprightlier air, that old Donald could be there to see.  MacRae was frank in his affection for the spot.  No other place that he had ever seen meant quite the same to him.  He was always glad to come back to it; it seemed imperative that he should always come back there.  It was home, his refuge, his castle.  Indeed he had seen castles across the sea from whose towers less goodly sights spread than he could command from his own front door, now that winter had stripped the maple and alder of their leafy screen.  There was the sheltered Cove at his feet, the far sweep of the Gulf—­colored according to its mood and the weather—­great mountain ranges lifting sheer from blue water, their lower slopes green with forest and their crests white with snow.  Immensities of land and trees.  All his environment pitched upon a colossal scale.  It was good to look at, to live among, and MacRae knew that it was good.