“Do you know, Dad,” began the girl, after the dishes had been washed and the man had thrown an armful of green bracken upon the fire to smudge away the mosquitoes.  “Do you know I think you are simply wonderful?” She was leaning against his knee, and her eyes looked into his.

“Tush, girl, what ails ye?” said the man, removing his pipe to send a cloud of blue smoke to mingle with the gray of the smudge.

“I mean it, Daddy, dear.  You are just wonderful.  Oh, I know how disappointed you are.  I know just how it hurts to have a man like Orcutt get the best of you.  I saw it in your face.”

“Did Orcutt see it, d’ye think?”

“Of course he did—­and he just gloated.”

“U-m-m,” said McNabb, and his lips twitched at the corners.

“And on top of all that you can smile!”

“Yup, isn’t it funny?  I can even grin.”

“But, Dad, will it—­ruin you?  Not that I care a bit, about the money.  We can be just as happy, maybe happier, without it.  I’m not the little fool you think I am.  I have always spent a lot of money because I had it to spend, but if we didn’t have it, I could be just as happy making what little I did have go as far as it could.  Maybe we’ll have to come up here and live in a cabin.  I love the North already, and I’ve hardly seen it.  We could have a cabin in the woods, and get some furniture when we could afford it, and then we could arrange it so cozily.  Really, I would be crazy about it.  And we could have trout every day, and wild ducks, and venison.  If we could afford a screened porch we could eat and sleep on it, and in the living room we could have a table——­”

“Good Lord, girl, arrangin’ furniture again!” cried old John.  “An I’d come home some night an’ break my neck before I could find the matchbox.  If we was to live in a cabin I’d spike the stuff to the floor!  But—­maybe it won’t be so bad as all that.”

“I’ve been hateful to you of late, Dad, because of—­of Oskar.  But really, you made an awful mistake.  I should think you would know that he couldn’t have taken that coat.  It isn’t in him!”

“I never said he ate it,” grinned the man.

“Oh, don’t joke about it!  Dad, I love Oskar.  He’s—­oh, he’s everything a man should be, and it hurts me so to have them saying he is a thief.  He isn’t a thief!  And the time will come when he will prove it.  Promise me, Dad, that when he does prove it, you will make every effort in your power to right the wrong you have done him.”

Old John’s hand rested for a moment upon the girl’s head.  “I promise all that, girl.  Surely ye know I can be just.  If it is as ye say, I’ll more than make it up to him.  I promise ye, his name shall not suffer.”

“I love you, Dad.  I know you are just—­but you’re a hard-hearted old Scot, just the same.  You don’t make many mistakes, but you have made two—­about Oskar, and about hiring that Wentworth.  I told you you’d be sorry.”