But Nathan! He only remembered that his mother had fussed about the blood on the bed clothing; that his father had come in and “reeled off the same old pack of lies” about his own boyhood and ended by reminding him that if he lost his job at the tannery, God help him for the father would not, needing his money just then more than ever. V Nat left his bed and idled about the house. His father came home at noon and contended that if he were strong enough to “fool around the place” he was strong enough to “get back on the job.” So that afternoon Nat took an hour to reel a dizzy way to the tannery office. Caleb looked up from a pile of freight bills. “Dad says you wanted to see me,” announced the lad. He hoped old Gridley would “fire” him. Any job would be better than returning to the horrors of the tannery. “Siddown,” ordered Caleb with a wave of his slab-like hand. The boy accepted a seat and waited, his head whirling lightly. Caleb finished his business and then jerked his head toward a side room where the two could talk alone. It had an unused desk, an old iron stove, a battered table, a few chairs, an old green safe. Caleb closed the door, motioned to a seat, found one himself and proceeded to fall into deep thought. He cut an enormous corner from a chunk of “chewin’.” “Perty good scrap you put up the other day, bub,” he remarked at length. Nathan sought to keep his mental balance, wishing some one would get him a drink, oh, for ice water! “Thank you,” he said weakly. “I allus admire to see a man that can use his dukes. Head hurt you much?” “Yes,” the boy said truthfully. “Hard luck! But you gotta expect bangs and bruises in this world, bub. What’s your old man think about it?” “He said if it lost me my job here, God help me,” returned Nathan defiantly. Caleb was silent for a time. Grim humor lurked in his hard old eye. Twice he lurched forward, raised the cover and spat in the bowels of the dead iron stove. “That so? Sort of a goldarn slave-driver, your old man, ain’t he?” Nathan offered no comment. “Whatcher want to go gettin’ into that fuss with Plumb for, anyhow?” “I was writing something—private—and Si came up and grabbed it away. Then he wouldn’t give it back.” Nathan stood in awe of old Gridley, partly because he was the boy’s employer, mostly because he was _her_ father. “Yeah,” affirmed Caleb, “what was it?” “It was—it was—poetry,” the lad confessed lamely. He wished he could get a drink, any kind of water if only it would keep the office from spinning around and around. “So you’re a poet?” “I like to read poetry and try writing it—sometimes.” “So I heard. I’m a bit of a poet myself!”