He broke off abruptly, shaking his head in sorrow at the recollection. “Poor old Jim!” he murmured, under his breath. For an interval we were silent; and then I suggested that Jim’s father must have done what he thought best for the boy. Chet would not accept this suggestion. “He knew better,” he said. “Any man knows better. There ought to be friendliness between a man and his son. My father used to take me fishing with him, but Jim was afraid of his father, and kept away from him, except when he had to work in the shop.” “Yet I’ll bet your father tanned your hide, Chet,” I argued. Chet laughed at that. “Sure he did. But there are ways of licking a boy.” He snapped his fingers to Frenchy, and the setter came to lay his chin upon Chet’s knee. Reck, jealous of this attention, at once rose and demanded a caress from me. “Take a dog,” said Chet. “You lick him to hurt, so he yelps with the pain of it, and the helplessness, and you can make a rogue dog out of him mighty quick. A pain that breaks down the pride of a man, or a boy, or a dog, and makes him beg for mercy, does bitter things to him. Man, or boy, or dog, he’s not what he was, after that has happened to him. I’ve known dog breakers that whipped dogs, and made rogues or cowards out of them. And that’s what Jim’s father did to him.” He filled his pipe, slowly, wedging the crumbled tobacco firmly down. “Jim used to go fishing with me and father, till his father stopped him,” he said. “Then he used to run away and go with me.” He chuckled, shamefacedly, “I remember one of those times, the first time he ever got drunk, I guess.” There was something like guilt in his countenance. “We’d been fishing in the rain, all morning; and when it come time to eat our lunch, Jim pulled out a little bottle. I asked him what it was, and he said: ‘It’s gin!’ “He’d got it out of a big bottle his father had. ‘I filled the bottle up with water,’ he told me. ‘So he’ll never know.’ We were soaking wet; and we sat straddling a log that had fallen across the brook, and finished that bottle between us. There couldn’t have been much more than half a pint. We drank it, and then we began to sing; and Jim was wilder than me. He got up to stand on the log, and fell off on his back in the water; and I went to pull him out and he pulled me in. The gin didn’t hit me the way it did him. I didn’t like it; and I only took a mouthful or two; but it got hold of Jim. “He was seventeen years old, then; and getting big for his age. But his father beat him awfully for that. The gin and water didn’t mix, so he saw someone had got at his bottle. But that was the last time he beat Jim. Jim got mad that time, and grabbed up an axe; and I guess it kind of worried and frightened the old man.” IV We puffed at our pipes in silence for a little while; and one of the dogs rose to lay his chin upon my knee. “I can’t help feeling sorry for his father, too,” I said at last.