are in liquidation, then things is going to look queer for some of us when the spring comes, and the question will be as to who can claim the boats, though some of them ain't much good." "I suppose that you'll stick to your'n, seeing that it is by far the best in the fleet," said another man, who had a deep, rumbling laugh.
Katherine looked at her father in dumb surprise.

She had been expecting him to announce the news of the fishing boats having been bought by the Englishman with the remarkable name, instead of which he was just going on with his work, and looking as if he had no more information than the others.
Lifting his head at that moment he caught his daughter's perplexed glance, and, after a moment, said hastily: "I wouldn't be in too much hurry about appropriating the boats if I were you." "Why not ?" chorused the listeners.
"Barton & Skinner have been bought out, and the new owner might not approve of his property being made off with in that fashion," 'Duke Radford replied.
"Who's bought it?
Who told you?
Look here, we want to know," one man burst out impatiently.
"Then you had better go up to the second portage and ask Astor M'Kree," rejoined 'Duke Radford slowly.

"It was he who told me about it, and he has got the order to build four more boats." "Now that looks like business, anyhow.

Who is the man ?" demanded Rick Portus, who was younger than the others, and meant "to make things hum" when he got a chance.
'Duke Radford fumbled with the head of a flour barrel, and for a moment did not answer.

It was an agonizing moment for Katherine, who was entering items in the ledger, and had to be blind and deaf to what was passing round her, yet all the time was acutely conscious that something was wrong somewhere.
The head of the barrel came off with a jerk, and then 'Duke answered with an air of studied indifference: "An Englishman, Astor M'Kree said he was; Selincourt or some such name, I think." A burst of eager talk followed this announcement, but, her entries made in the ledger, Katherine slipped away from it all and hurried into the sitting-room, where supper was already beginning.