“Here’s the story, Nat. About eight months ago we manufactured a lot of shirts for the Russian government. Ships were at a premium to transport goods across the Atlantic. Beside, they might be subject to seizure going up through the Baltic if the German fleet came out. So we routed those goods across America and shipped them over the Pacific. But you know what’s happening up in Russia. And here we are, with about forty thousand dollars’ worth of goods stuck somewhere in the Orient, and what’s going to become of them if we don’t send a representative to look out for them, the Lord only knows. Nat, the directors couldn’t give you that New York job because of the impediment your wife was—I’d just as soon say so now. But we can give you this trip and a bigger job when you get back, if the war turns out the way we hope. We want you to go to Vladivostok within the next thirty days and look after the placing of those goods in the hands of the proper parties.” “Whew!” exclaimed Nathan. “A mere trifle! What else?” “Nat, old man, we’ve got confidence that you can work it out, or we wouldn’t send you. We’ll get your passports and routing—to sail from San Francisco on or about the first of April. And you can have until that time to wind up your affairs. You may be gone a devil of a time and circle the world before you get back. But it’ll be a college education and I don’t want you to refuse.” “I’ll go—of course,” assented the lad. But for a time his gaze was blank. He was thinking of his father, last heard from in Japan—directly in his route. IV A dour time followed when Mrs. Anna Forge heard that Nathan had been slated for a trip to the Far East. She acclaimed in the highways and byways that the Thornes were sending her boy to his death, to be gnawed by wolves and lashed with knouts. She visited old Jim Thorne in his offices and told him what she thought of him. Nathan had to be called to take her away. The week before Nat left town she clawed his face when he tried to get her out of my house, whither she had come to invoke my intercession in stopping the mad enterprise. “After all I’ve done for him, he goes off to the other side the world and leaves me! Casts me aside like an old shoe! He shan’t go! He shan’t! He shan’t!” It developed that she was not half so much concerned for Nathan’s welfare, or what might possibly happen to him in the Orient, as she was for herself and how she was going to live in the meantime. With Nathan’s wife eliminated at last, of course God had shown plainly enough that He wished the son to devote the rest of his days and dollars to his darling mother. She went and saw a lawyer about it and when the lawyer was cool, she visited the editor of the local paper and wanted a “piece” inserted therein, flaying the lawyer alive and exposing him as a double-dealer, a horse thief, a wife beater and a villain of the deepest dye.