Jim turned and looked at his father. Somehow he felt detached from himself, as if he were sitting at a distance twiddling his thumbs and watching his own wheels go round. He occupied the position of spectator very briefly, however, but popped back inside of himself and took possession again—with a noticeable change. He felt different. He did not feel like Jim Ashe as he had been acquainted with Jim Ashe, but like another individual of markedly different characteristics. This change manifested itself in his reply: “All right. We’ll decide now. Now!” “Yes?” said Clothespin Jimmy, his fingers tightening ever so little. “I take the mill,” said Jim. “Huh!” his father said. That was all. He slipped the bonds into his side pocket. From another pocket he drew an envelope holding two long, many-times-folded strips of blue paper. Jim recognized them as railroad tickets. “You’d better go to Diversity on Friday. This is Tuesday. Your ma and me leave for Californy on Friday mornin’.” Jim eyed his father suspiciously. “Had the tickets all the time?” “Yes.” “You were going, anyhow?” “No; not unless you took the mill.” The old man chuckled. Jim snorted. “Pretty sure how I’d decide, weren’t you?” “Well, seein’ as you’re my son—and your ma’s—I wasn’t more ’n a mite worried. I figgered you was sound timber, but there was always the chance that sap rot had got at you. That envelope there was the stock certificates, all indorsed over to you, inside of it. Take ’em. You’re the proprietor of the Ashe Clothespin Company now. I’m through with it. Fifty years of work to earn a couple of years of play for ma and me. When we’re gone write us often. We’ll need to hear from you. But don’t you dast to mention clothespins to me—either good or bad about ’em. I’m through. Through for good and all—and it’s up to you.” “Done.” said young James. CHAPTER II Young Jim Ashe rode from five o’clock in the morning until two in the afternoon on a train that carried him through a stretch of the State of Michigan that not even a local poet had ventured to call lovely. It was flat as an exhausted purse—indeed, it was an exhausted purse, for its wealth in straight, clean pine had long since poured from it, down its rivers to mills where it had been minted into money. With this money a second generation that did not know a wanigan from a cook-shanty, cork pine from Norway, nor the difference between the Doyle and Scribner scales, was getting its names in the Sunday papers and illustrated magazines as bold and hardy owners of imported Chow dogs.