Hector McKaye and his close-mouthed general manager, Andrew Daney,
were the only persons who knew the extent of The Laird's fortune. Even
their knowledge was approximate, however, for The Laird disliked to
delude himself, and carried on his books at their cost-price
properties which had appreciated tremendously in value since their
purchase. The knowledge of his wealth brought to McKaye a goodly
measure of happiness--not because he was of Scottish ancestry and had
inherited a love for his baubees, but because he was descended from a
fierce, proud Scottish clan and wealth spelled independence to him and
his.
The Laird would have filled his cup of happiness to overflowing had he
married a less mediocre woman or had he raised his daughters as he had
his son. The girls' upbringing had been left entirely in their
mother's hands. Not so with young Donald, however--wherefore it was a
byword in Port Agnew that Donald was his father's son, a veritable
chip of the old block.
By some uncanny alchemy, hard cash appears to soften the heads and
relax the muscles of rich men's sons--at least, such had been old
Hector's observation, and on the instant that he first gazed upon the
face of his son, there had been born in him a mighty resolve that,
come what might, he would not have it said of him that he had made a
fool of his boy. And throughout the glad years of his fatherhood, with
the stern piety of his race and his faith, he had knelt night and
morning beside his bed and prayed his God to help him not to make a
fool of Donald--to keep Donald from making a fool of himself.
When Donald entered Princeton, his father decided upon an experiment.
He had raised his boy right, and trained him for the race of life, and
now The Laird felt that, like a thoroughbred horse, his son faced the
barrier. Would he make the run, or would he, in the parlance of the
sporting world, "dog it?" Would his four years at a great American
university make of him a better man, or would he degenerate into a
snob and a drone?
With characteristic courage, The Laird decided to give him ample
opportunity to become either, for, as old Hector remarked to Andrew
Daney: "If the lad's the McKaye I think he is, nothing can harm him.
On the other hand, if I'm mistaken, I want to know it in time, for my
money and my Port Agnew Lumber Company is a trust, and if he can't
handle it, I'll leave it to the men who can--who've helped me create
it--and Donald shall earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. Tools,"
he added, "belong to the men that can use them."
When Donald started East for college, old Hector accompanied him as
far as Seattle. On the way up, there was some man-talk between them.
In his youth, old Hector had not been an angel, which is to state that
he had been a lumberjack. He knew men and the passions that beset
them--particularly when they are young and lusty--and he was far from
being a prude. He expected his son to raise a certain amount of wild
oats; nay, he desired it, for full well he knew that when the fires
of youth are quenched, they are liable to flare disgracefully in
middle life or old age.
"Never pig it, my son," was his final admonition. "Raise hell if you
must, but if you love your old father, be a gentleman about it. You've
sprung from a clan o' men, not mollycoddles."
"Hence the expression: 'When Hector was a pup,'" Donald replied
laughingly. "Well, I'll do my best, father--only, if I stub my toe,
you mustn't be too hard on me. Remember, please, that I'm only half
Scotch."
At parting, The Laird handed his son a check for twenty-five thousand
dollars.
"This is the first year's allowance, Donald," he informed the boy
gravely. "It should not require more than a hundred thousand dollars
to educate a son of mine, and you must finish in four years. I would
not care to think you dull or lazy."
"Do you wish an accounting, father?"
The Laird shook his head.
"Keeping books was ever a sorry trade, my son. I'll read the
accounting in your eye when you come back to Port Agnew."
"Oh!" said young Donald.
At the end of four years, Donald graduated, an honor-man in all his
studies, and in the lobby of the gymnasium, where the athletic heroes
of Princeton leave their record to posterity, Hector McKaye read his
son's name, for, of course, he was there for commencement. Then they
spent a week together in New York, following which old Hector
announced that one week of New York was about all he could stand. The
tall timber was calling for him.
"Hoot, mon!" Donald protested gaily. He was a perfect mimic of Sir
Harry Lauder at his broadest. "Y'eve nae had a bit holiday in all yer
life. Wha' spier ye, Hector McKaye, to a trip aroond the worl', wi' a
wee visit tae the auld clan in the Hielands?"
"Will you come with me, son?" The Laird inquired eagerly.
"Certainly not! You shall come with me. This is to be my party."
"Can you stand the pressure? I'm liable to prove an expensive
traveling companion."
"Well, there's something radically wrong with both of us if we can't
get by on two hundred thousand dollars, dad."
The Laird started, and then his Scotch sense of humor--and, for all
the famed wit of the Irish, no humor on earth is so unctuous as that
of the Scotch--commenced to bubble up. He suspected a joke on himself
and was prepared to meet it.
"Will you demand an accounting, my son?"
Donald shook his head.
"Keeping books was ever a sorry trade, father, I'll read the
accounting in your eye when you get back to Port Agnew."
"You braw big scoundrel! You've been up to something. Tell it me, man,
or I'll die wi' the suspense of it."
"Well," Donald replied, "I lived on twenty-five hundred a year in
college and led a happy life. I had a heap of fun, and nothing went by
me so fast that I didn't at least get a tail-feather. My college
education, therefore, cost me ten thousand dollars, and I managed to
squeeze a roadster automobile into that, also. With the remaining
ninety thousand, I took a flier in thirty-nine hundred acres of red
cedar up the Wiskah River. I paid for it on the instalment plan
--yearly payments secured by first mortgage at six per cent., and----"
"Who cruised it for you?" The Laird almost shouted. "I'll trust no
cruiser but my own David McGregor."
"I realized that, so I engaged Dave for the job. You will recall that
he and I took a two months' camping-trip after my first year in
Princeton. It cruised eighty thousand feet to the acre, and I paid two
dollars and a half per thousand for it. Of course, we didn't succeed
in cruising half of it, but we rode through the remainder, and it all
averaged up very nicely. And I saw a former cruise of it made by a
disinterested cruiser----"
The Laird had been doing mental arithmetic.
"It cost you seven hundred and eighty thousand dollars--and you've
paid ninety thousand, principal and interest, on account. Why, you
didn't have the customary ten per cent, of the purchase-price as an
initial payment!"
"The owner was anxious to sell. Besides, he knew I was your son, and I
suppose he concluded that, after getting ninety thousand dollars out
of me at the end of three years, you'd have to come to my rescue when
the balance fell due--in a lump. If you didn't, of course he could
foreclose."
"I'll save you, my son. It was a good deal--a splendid deal!"
"You do not have to, dad. I've sold it--at a profit of an even two
hundred thousand dollars!"
"Lad, why did you do it? Why didn't you take me into your confidence?
That cedar is worth three and a half. In a few years, 'twill be worth
five."
"I realized that, father, but--a bird in the hand is worth two in the
bush--and I'm a proud sort of devil. I didn't want to run to you for
help on my first deal, even though I knew you'd come to my rescue and
ask no questions. You've always told me to beware of asking favors,
you know. Moreover, I had a very friendly feeling toward the man I
sold my red cedar to; I hated to stick him too deeply."
"You were entitled to your profit, Donald. 'Twas business. You should
have taken it. Ah, lad, if you only knew the terrible four years I've
paid for yon red-cedar!"
"You mean the suspense of not knowing how I was spending my
allowance?"
The Laird nodded.
"Curiosity killed a cat, my son, and I'm not as young as I used to
be."
"I had thought you'd have read the accounting in my eye. Take another
look, Hector McKaye." And Donald thrust his smiling countenance close
to his father's.
"I see naught in your eye but deviltry and jokes."
"None are so blind as they that will not see. If you see a joke, dad,
it's on you."
Old Hector blinked, then suddenly he sprang at his son, grasped him by
the shoulders, and backed him against the wall.
"Did you sell me that red cedar?" he demanded incredulously.
"Aye, mon; through an agent," Donald burred Scottishly. "A' did nae
ha' the heart tae stick my faither sae deep for a bit skulin'. A'm a
prood man, Hector McKaye; a'll nae take a grrand eeducashun at sic a
price. 'Tis nae Christian."
"Ah, my bonny bairn!" old Hector murmured happily, and drew his fine
son to his heart. "What a grand joke to play on your puir old father!
Och, mon, was there ever a lad like mine?"
"I knew you'd buy that timber for an investment if I offered it cheap
enough," Donald explained. "Besides, I owed you a poke. You wanted to
be certain you hadn't reared a jackass instead of a man, so you gave
me a hundred thousand dollars and stood by to see what I'd do with
it--didn't you, old Scotty?" Hector nodded a trifle guiltily. "Andrew
Daney wrote me you swore by all your Highland clan that the man who
sold you that red cedar was ripe for the fool-killer."
"Tush, tush!" The Laird protested. "You're getting personal now. I
dislike to appear inquisitive, but might I ask what you've done with
your two hundred thousand profit?"
"Well, you see, dad, I would have felt a trifle guilty had I kept it,
so I blew it all in on good, conservative United States bonds,
registered them in your name, and sent them to Daney to hide in your
vault at Port Agnew."
"Ah, well, red cedar or bonds, 'twill all come back to you some day,
sonny. The real profit's in the fun--"
"And the knowledge that I'm not a fool--eh, father?"
Father love supernal gleamed in The Laird's fine gray eyes.
"Were you a fool, my son, and all that I have in the world would cure
you if thrown into the Bight of Tyee, I'd gladly throw it and take up
my life where I began it--with pike-pole and peavy, double-bitted ax,
and cross-cut saw. However, since you're not a fool, I intend to
continue to enjoy my son. We'll go around the world together."
Thus did the experiment end. At least, Donald thought so. But when he
left the hotel a few minutes later to book two passages to Europe, The
Laird of Tyee suddenly remembered that thanks were due his
Presbyterian God. So he slid to his old knees beside his bed and
murmured:
"Lord, I thank thee! For the sake of thine own martyred Son, set
angels to guard him and lead him in the path of manly honor that comes
at last to thy kingdom. Amen."
Then he wired Andrew Daney a long telegram of instructions and a stiff
raise in salary.
"The boy has a head like a tar-bucket," he concluded. "Everything I
ever put into it has stuck. We are going to frolic round the world
together, and we will be home when we get back."