Jarrod looked at the register. The little fat man had written: "Geo. B. Still, Quincy, Ill." The Jarrods shopped during the day, and bought themselves and the children cool things for summer. In the evening they went down to the river and boarded the big steel steamer that was to carry them to their destination. CHAPTER II. JIM. A whistle blew; the little tug strained at its cable, and snorting and puffing in the supreme struggle it drew the great steamer "Plymouth" away from its dock to begin its journey down the river to the open lake and thence, discarding its tug, across mighty Michigan to Iroquois Bay, Tamawaca, and the quaint city of Kochton. The passengers thronged both the ample decks to catch the cooling breeze that came as soon as they were in motion, for the day had been especially warm for June. The older folks drew long lines of chairs to the rails, while the young people walked up and down, chattering and gay. To nearly all the voyage meant the beginning of a holiday, and hearts were light and faces eager and expectant. Jarrod had no sooner located his family in a comfortable corner than he was attracted by a young man who sauntered by. "Why, Jim, is it you?" he exclaimed, jumping up to hold out a hand in greeting. The other paused, as if astonished, but then said in a cordial tone: "You here, Mr. Jarrod?" He was a tall, athletic looking fellow, with a fine face, a straightforward look in his eyes and a clean-cut air about him that was pleasant to behold. Jarrod had recognized him as the only son of a man he had known in St. Louis--a man very prominent and wealthy, he remembered. "What are you doing here, Jim?" he enquired. "Why, I live in Chicago now, you know," was the reply. "You do?" "Didn't you know, sir? I left home over a year ago. I'm hoeing my own row now, Mr. Jarrod." "What's wrong, Jim?" "Father and I couldn't agree. He wanted me to take to the patent medicine business, because he has made a fortune in it." "Very natural," nodding. "The poor father suffers a good deal from rheumatism, you know; so as soon as I left college he proposed to turn over to me the manufacture and sale of his great rheumatism cure." "Ah." "And I balked, Mr. Jarrod. I said the proprietor of a rheumatism cure had no business to suffer from rheumatism, or else no business to sell the swindling remedy." "To be sure. I know your father, Jim, so I can imagine what happened, directly you made that statement. Did he give you anything when you--er--parted?" "Not a sou. I'm earning my own living." "Good. But how?" "They don't take a boy just out of college for the president of a bank or the director of a railway. I'm just a clerk in Marshall Field's." Jarrod looked him over, critically. The cheap new summer suit--perhaps it had cost fifteen dollars--could not disguise his manly bearing. On another man it might have proclaimed its cheapness; on Jim no one noticed its texture.