"Sure," Ted grinned, "I'll be famous as a deer hunter before I ever am as a resort owner." Finally satisfied with his stretching board, Al laid it carefully in a corner. He took a blackened pipe from his shirt pocket and an exquisitely wrought tobacco pouch from his trousers. Made of home-tanned buckskin, even if the pouch had not borne the stamp of Al's craftsmanship, it would have been recognized as his. His name, A. HARKNESS, was stencilled on it. Al filled his pipe, lighted it and puffed lazy bursts of blue smoke into the air. Tammie, who, in common with most dogs, disliked the smell of tobacco, sneezed and moved farther away. For a moment Al did not speak. Finally he murmured, "So now you're goin' to be a famous resort owner?" "Why, didn't you know?" Ted asked gaily. "The Mahela Lodge will be known all the way from Lorton to Danzer." Al grinned faintly. "That's a real long ways, nigh onto six miles. You wouldn't change your mind?" "About what?" "You can still go to college this fall and learn to be a dentist, lawyer, or anything else you want." "Colleges cost money." "I have," Al said tartly, "been scarin' up a penny every now and again since I been changin' your didies. I can still scare up enough to send you through college, but I mistrust about startin' you in the resort business. Crestwood cost Carl Thornton more money than I've earned in my whole life." "I don't want to leave the Mahela." "Too much of your pappy in you," Al growled, "and not enough of your mother. I want you to be somethin' besides a woods runner." "It isn't that, Dad. I've tried to explain to you. It's the people--seeing them come in here all tired out, and seeing them go away rested and refreshed after we've shown them everything we have in the Mahela. I know college is valuable and I don't look down my nose at education. But this is my job." Al sighed. "I've tried to talk some sense into you. How are you and Thornton gettin' along?" "Dad, Thornton owns Crestwood. I just work there." "So that makes Thornton better'n you, huh? You're goin' to be a right smart passel of time, savin' enough to start your own resort on what Thornton pays you." "I'm getting experience, meeting people, learning how it's done. I'm really learning the business from the bottom up." "Huh?" "Nels Anderson and I have been working on the plumbing in Crestwood's basement," Ted grinned. Al frowned. "I'm not foolin'. This is a big job you've set up for yourself and I don't see how you'll ever get enough money to do it." Ted said confidently, "I'll work it out." "I wish," Al declared, "that I was eighteen 'stead of forty-nine. I'd be able to work things out, too. But it's you doin' it. Everybody's got to live the way they see fit." Al picked up another board and began shaping it. Ted took his pocketknife from his pocket. "I'll help you, huh?" "Reckon not." Al shook his head. "Sunday's your day off." "Let me help. It wouldn't really be work to me."