The Inger filled his father’s plate and went on frying meat. In the firelight, their faces looked alike. The older man’s skin was beginning to draw tightly, showing the rugged modelling of the thick bones. His huge hands looked loose and ineffectual. Something welled up and flooded the Inger when he saw his father’s hand tremble as it lifted his tin cup. Larger in scale, more definite in drawing, and triumphantly younger the Inger was, brown skinned, level eyed, and deep chested, his naked, veined right arm grasping the handle of the skillet as if it were a battering ram. When the Inger registered in the inn at Inch or signed a check in his bank in the City, his pen bit through the paper like acid, because he did everything as if his tool were a battering ram. But his eyes, as they rested now on his father’s hand that trembled, were soft and mute, like a dog’s eyes. “What kind of luck, Dad?” he said. The older man looked across his wooden platter and smiled whimsically. “Same kind,” he answered. “None. But look a-here, Sonny—” he added, “I found out something.” “I bet you did,” said the Inger. “I ain’t ever going to have any luck,” said the old man. “I’m done for. I’m done. A year or two more and I’ll be spaded in. It’s the darndest, funniest feeling,” he said musingly, “to get on to it that you’re all in—a back number—got to quit plannin’ it.” “Not on your life—” the Inger began, but his father roared at him. “Shut up!” he said fondly. “You danged runt you, you must have knowed it for two years back.” “Knowed nothin’,” said the Inger, stoutly. The older man put his plate on the ground and lay down beside it, his head on his hand. “It’s a devil of a feel,” he said. “Don’t feel it,” said the Inger. “Cut it,” said his father, almost sternly. “I brought you up to kill a man if you have to—but not to lie to him, ain’t I? Well, don’t you lie to me now.” The Inger was silent, and his father went on. “I was always so dead sure,” he said, “that I was cut out to be rich. When I was a kid in the tannery, I was dead sure. When I hit the trail for the mines I thought the time was right ahead. That was fifty years ago....” “Quit, Dad,” said the Inger, uncomfortably. “I’ve got it—what’s the difference? The Flag-pole is good for all either of us will ever want.” “I ain’t forgot, though,” said the older man, quickly, “that you banked on the Flag-pole agin’ my advice. If you’d done as I said, you’d been grubbin’ yet, same as me.” “It’s all luck,” said the Inger. “What can anybody tell? We’re gettin’ the stuff—and there’s a long sight more’n we need. Ain’t that enough? What you want to wear yourself out for?” His father leaned against the end of the warm rock, and lighted his pipe. “Did I say I wanted to?” he asked. “I done it so long I can’t help myself. I’ll be schemin’ out deals, and bein’ let in on the ground floor, and findin’ a sure thing till I croak. _And_ gettin’ took in, regular.” He regarded his son curiously.