The Hammond household, considered as a whole, proved to be unlike anything Jim Todhunter had ever known or imagined. Mrs. Hammond, colorless and thin, with apprehensive, faded blue eyes, a furtive manner and the voice of a peacock; Melchior Hammond, loutish, high-colored, with eyes as dark as his father's but less closely set against his nose; Alice, who seemed at first to possess no distinguishing feature or characteristic save a wavering blush and a trick of drooping the eyelids; Jane, remarkable for two pigtails, freckles, and a sly smile; and Sam, a small boy with the most objectionable and forward manners imaginable. Of such materials was the domestic circle composed into which Amos Hammond introduced young Jim Todhunter, who had once dreamed of Yale, who had inherited an enthusiasm for adventure and the out-of-doors, but who had been brought up in an environment as different from all this as it was possible to be. And the setting of the Hammond household was as strange and astonishing to Jim Todhunter as were the people themselves. Hammond took Jim over to the store. "Mel, you show James 'round," he said to his son. "I got to write a few letters. Show 'im the stock an' learn 'im somethin' about the way we do business in this part of the world. I'll look out for customers." Melchior led Jim to the back of the dusky store, out of earshot and eyeshot of his father. "How'd ye get along with the old man?" he whispered. "Not very well, I'm afraid," replied Jim frankly. "He seemed rather peeved with me several times." Melchior's somewhat sullen face brightened. "Maybe ye ain't scart enough of the Lord to suit 'im?" he suggested eagerly. "I don't know about that, but he was all worked up about my playing black-jack with White at Covered Bridge. He was quite rude about it, and I'm afraid I told him where to get off at." "Told the old man----!" exclaimed Melchior. "Played cards with Harvey White? Say, you'll do! You ain't the kind I expected. I been lookin' for some sort of a feeble-minded guy. Thought you must be to be fool enough to come way up here for the fun of helpin' run a store. How happened it, anyhow? You must have been took in by someone, you and the man that wrote about you." "My uncle's friend did what he considered most useful in helping me come to a country that interested me," said Jim coldly. "He is a big business man. Stick to a subject you understand." "I didn't mean to say anything to fuss ye up," returned Melchior hastily. "I was only sayin'--but I guess him an' you didn't know how things are done in this country, or he wouldn't of suggested you invest any money in any business of my old man's, or he wouldn't of sent you to Millbrook to learn it. But you won't learn it, not the way I size ye up." "What's wrong with the business?" asked Jim anxiously.