How much two-inch stock can you ship at once. Must come box-cars. Price. In two hours he had replies, irritated, humorous, bewildered. “Box-cars? Are you crazy?” one said. Jim grinned. He knew it must sound like lunacy to be ordering lumber of the class he wanted in box-cars. He replied to all, reiterating his demands. “Fifty cents extra per thousand for loading,” came back replies. “How many cars?” Jim countered. “When?” Muskegon could ship two cars next day and one the day after. Traverse could ship three cars within three days. Reed City could ship four, on four successive days. “O. K.,” wired Jim. “Let them come hustling.” He had solved his car problem. Moran’s road could not stop cars shipped through. They would be set in on Jim’s siding and unloaded, and because Jim had requisitions in for cars as yet unsupplied, he could reload them and ship them out again filled with his product. He called in Grierson. “I’ve accepted an order for fifteen thousand pins for Argentine Republic. Price seventy cents New York. To be shipped in ten days.” Grierson threw up his hands. “We haven’t the pins. We can’t get the cars to ship them.” “We’ve got the pins, and the cars are on their way to us. Send your young man out after Beam.” The superintendent came in presently. “I’ve got ten box-cars of two-inch maple and birch coming in within the next three or four days. Have a gang ready to take care of it. Put on enough extra men in the shipping department to load as fast as the cars empty,” he said. Beam gaped at Jim. Then his eyes brightened, he grinned, he threw back his head and roared. “Mr. Ashe,” he said, when he could speak, “you’re a regular feller, and sudden!” The cars arrived. On the eighth day fifteen thousand boxes of pins were on their way to New York in eight box-cars, and the freight-agent of Moran’s railroad looked at Jim with the light of admiration in his eyes. Jim had met a sudden emergency suddenly and efficiently. He was tempted to sit down and describe the feat to his father, who would have delighted in it. But he did not. He remembered Clothespin Jimmy’s admonition not to bother him with his business. But Clothespin Jimmy learned of the matter, which Jim did not know. He learned of it promptly, as he learned most of the details of what went on in the mill, from a source Jim was far from suspecting. The day after the last car was on its way Zaanan Frame stopped Jim on the street. “Hain’t forgot that strip of timber of old Le Bar’s?” he asked. “No,” said Jim. “Nice afternoon for a drive,” said Zaanan, “out toward Le Bar’s.” “Very,” said Jim, smiling at the old man’s manner of handling a situation. “Would you like to go with me?” “No,” said Zaanan, gruffly, “but if I was drivin’ that way and come to Bullet’s Corners and there wa’n’t nobody there, I calc’late I’d slack down and wait till somebody come. G’-by, Jim.”