Kindred of the Dust. Peter B. Kyne

Laird was in Europe."

      "They would never have dared it had he been in Port Agnew. I'm surprised that Andrew Daney permitted it. I had thought of him as a man of courage, but, strange to say, these people outgamed him."

      "They didn't outgame him, Donald. He just didn't care. I—I—fancy he concluded they would make agreeable neighbors—for me."

      "I'm sorry, Nan. However, I'm the new laird of Tyee, and I've come down to stage an eviction. I didn't know of this state of affairs until this morning."

      She smiled a little wistfully and bitterly.

      "I had flattered myself, Donald, you had called to visit your old friends instead. When you waved at me last night, I—oh, you can't realize how happy it made me to know that you had noticed me—that you really were big enough to be the big man of Port Agnew. And I thought perhaps you would come because of that."

      He smiled tolerantly upon her.

      "Something has occurred to make you bitter, Nan. You're not like the girl I used to know before I went away to school. If it will help to restore me to your previous good opinion, however, please believe that when I waved at you last night, simultaneously I made up my mind to make an early visit to the Sawdust Pile. The discovery that these cattle have intruded upon you and your old father, because you were unable to defend yourselves and no one in Port Agnew would defend you, merely hastened my visit. I couldn't in decency come any earlier; could I, Nan? It's just half after eight. And if you're going to keep me standing at the gate, as if I were a sewing-machine agent instead of a very old friend, I may conclude to take offense and regret that I called."

      "Oh, I'm sorry! Please forgive me, Donald. I'm so much alone—so very lonely—I suppose I grow suspicious of people and their motives."

      "Say no more about it, Nan. May I come in, then, to greet Caleb and your husband?"

      "Father is in the house. I'll call him out, Donald. As for my husband—" She hesitated, glanced out across the bight, and then resolutely faced him. "You cannot have heard all of the town gossip, then?"

      "I hadn't even heard of your marriage. The first I knew of it was when his little nibs here hailed me, and asked me if I was his father. Then he informed me he was your boy. He's a lovely child, Nan, and I have been the recipient of some of his extremely moist kisses."

      She realized that he was too courteous to ask whether her husband was dead or if there had been a divorce.

      "I'm rather glad you haven't heard, Donald," she replied evenly. "I much prefer to tell you myself; then you will understand why I cannot invite you into our house, and why you must not be seen talking to me here at the gate. I am not married. I have never been married. My baby's name is—Brent, and I call him Donald, after the only male human being that has ever been truly kind to my father and me."

      "Ah," said Donald quietly, "so that's why he misses his father and appears to want one so very much."

      She gazed forlornly out to sea and answered with a brief nod. Seemingly she had long since ceased to be tragic over her pitiful tragedy.

      "Well," he replied philosophically, "life is quite filled with a number of things, and some of them make for great unhappiness." He stooped and lifted the baby in his great arms. "You're named after me, sonny; so I think I'll try to fill the gap and make you happy. Do you mind, Nan, if I try my hand at foster-fathering? I like children. This little man starts life under a handicap, but I'll see to it that he gets his chance in life—far from Port Agnew, if you desire." She closed her eyes in sudden pain and did not answer. "And whatever your opinion on the matter may be, Nan," he went on, "even had I known yesterday of your sorrow, I should have called to-day just the same."

      "You call it my 'sorrow!'" she burst forth passionately. "Others call it my trouble—my sin—my disgrace."

      "And what does Caleb call it, Nan?"

      "He doesn't call it, Donald. It hasn't appeared to make any difference with him. I'm still—his little girl."

      "Well, I cannot regard you as anything but a little girl—the same little girl that used to help Caleb and me sail the sloop. I don't wish to know anything about your sorrow, or your trouble, or your disgrace, or your sin, or whatever folks may choose to call it. I just want you to know that I know that you're a good woman, and when the spirit moves me—which will be frequently, now that I have this young man to look after—I shall converse with you at your front gate and visit you and your decent old father in this little house, and be damned to those that decry it. I am the young laird of Tyee. My father raised me to be a gentleman, and, by the gods, I'll be one! Now, Nan, take the boy and go in the house, because I see a rascally negro in the doorway of that shack yonder, and I have a matter to discuss with him. Is that white woman his consort?"

      Nan nodded again. She could not trust herself to speak, for her heart was full to overflowing.

      "Come here—you!" Donald called to the negro. The fellow slouched forth defiantly. He was a giant mulatto, and his freckled face wore an evil and contemptuous grin.

      "I'm Donald McKaye," Donald informed him. "I'm the new laird of Tyee. I want you and that woman to pack up and leave."

      "How soon, boss?"

      "Immediately." Anticipating a refusal, Donald stepped closer to the mulatto and looked him sternly in the eye.

      "We-ll, is dat so?" the yellow rascal drawled. "So youh-all's de new la'rd, eh? Well, ah'm de king o' de Sawdust Pile, an' mah house is mah castle. Git dat, Mistah La'rd?"

      Donald turned toward Nan.

      "I'm going to have trouble here, Nan. Please go in the house."

      "Proceed," she replied simply. "I have a most unwomanly and unladylike desire to see that beast manhandled."

      Donald turned, in time to go under a sizzling right-hand blow from the mulatto and come up with a right uppercut to the ugly, freckled face and a left rip to the mulatto's midriff. The fellow grunted, and a spasm of pain crossed his countenance. "You yellow dog!" Donald muttered, and flattened his nose far flatter than his mammy had ever wiped it. The enemy promptly backed away and covered; a hearty thump in the solar plexus made him uncover, and under a rain of blows on the chin and jaw, he sprawled unconscious on the ground.

      Donald left him lying there and stepped to the door of the shack. The frightened drab within spat curses at him.

      "Pack and go!" he ordered. "Within the hour, I'm going to purge the Sawdust Pile with fire; if you stay in the house, you'll burn with it."

      She was ready in ten minutes. Three more of her kind occupying an adjacent shack begged to be allowed time in which to load their personal possessions in an express-wagon. The four Greeks were just about to set out for a day's fishing, but, having witnessed the defeat of the mulatto bully, the fever of the hegira seized them also. They loaded their effects in the fishing-launch, and chugged away up river to Darrow, crying curses upon the young laird of Tyee and promising reprisal.

      Donald waited until the last of the refugees had departed before setting fire to the shacks. Then he stood by old Caleb Brent's house, a circle of filled buckets around him, and watched in case the wind should suddenly shift and shower sparks upon the roof. In half an hour the Sawdust Pile had reverted to its old status and a throng of curious townspeople who, attracted by the flames and smoke, had clustered outside Caleb Brent's gate to watch Donald at work, finally despaired of particulars and scattered when they saw Donald and Nan Brent enter the house.

      Caleb Brent, looking twenty years older than when Donald had seen him last, sat in an easy chair by the window, gazing with lack-luster eyes out across the bight. He was hopelessly crippled with rheumatism, and his sea-blue eyes still held the same lost-dog wistfulness.

      "Hello, Caleb!" Donald greeted him cordially. "I've just cleaned up the Sawdust Pile for you. You're back in undisputed possession again."

      He shook hands with old Caleb and sat down in a chair which Nan drew up for him.

      "It's