Kindred of the Dust. Peter B. Kyne

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