“I’ll flog you within an inch of your life!” “Don’t do it, dad! It’ll only make things worse.” There was a queer ring in the boy’s voice. Johnathan was so totally and completely taken aback he was weak all over. His own son!—in his own house!—openly defying him!—declaring bluntly and boldly that he, the father, was not to have perfect obedience in all things. “My son, don’t have me call down the curse of God upon you! It will follow you all the days of your life.” “You don’t have to call down anything, Pa. You’re trying to make me give up the only thing I know how to do and do well. You haven’t any right to do it. I know you haven’t. I _feel_ it. I can write good enough to get published. So I’m going on. I don’t believe you know what’s good for me at all, or you wouldn’t ask it. Instead of helping me in the fog, you’re only making it worse.” “You miserable, little——” “I’m going to be twenty-one in just four years more. I’m going to boss my own life then. You can lick me now if you want. But if you do—for just wanting to keep on with the thing I can do best and easiest and like to do—I’ve pretty near made up my mind I’m going to run away—where you can’t find me till I’m twenty-one. And I’m never coming back.” “God’s curses——” “I don’t believe God curses any one, Pa. He’s too busy running the stars and suns and—heaven—to care whether I like poetry or you want me to be a business man.” “And you’d—stand up to your father—like this——?” “When I don’t think I’ve done any wrong, yes.” “I’ll thrash you——” “All right, Pa. Only to-morrow morning I won’t be here. You’ll never do it again.” “I’ll have the law on you and fetch you back!” “The law’ll never know where I am—to fetch me back.” For the first time, Johnathan stood checkmate. That queer, hard ring in his incorrigible son’s voice told him subconsciously that he was close to the end of seventeen years of bullying. Such a thing had never happened before. His wife had fought with him, indeed, but it had always been a “chewing match.” Though he had never struck her, the fact remained that he could strike her and beat her up thoroughly, if he chose. He had a feeling, however, that if he went beyond a certain point with Nathan, the devil had hold of his son’s soul just hard enough so that Johnathan might encounter the distressing predicament of not being able to come off victor. Nathan had whipped the Plumb fellow. The Plumb fellow was larger than Johnathan. In popular parlance, Johnathan was rather “up against it.” The father did a strange thing. He arose abruptly, turned and walked from the room. Nathan heard him pass through the hall, out the front door, across the veranda and down the steps. Why had he gone? Where was he headed? This silent, abrupt, unexplained, ominous departure unnerved the lad more than any commencement of fistic hostilities.