“What do you mean?  Explain yourself.”

But the daughter was not yet ready to do so.  She had her thoughts or dreams or whatever they might be, but was not prepared as yet to share them with her parent.  He was not in the mood, and for her to tell all that was in her mind would be to provoke an outburst that would be painful to the last degree.  She chose for the present to parry.

“How can I know, father, what ambition Tim has?  He is still young enough to change that ambition, whatever it may be.”

“And he’s got to change it, as sure as he lives!  I am tired of his fooling; he is fourteen years old, big, strong, and healthy; if he would take hold of the work and show some interest in it, he would be able in a couple of years to take charge of the whole business and give me a rest, but he is frittering away valuable time until I’ve made up my mind to permit it no longer.”

The parent knocked the bowl of his pipe against the column of the porch and shook his head in a way that showed he meant every word he said.  Maggie was troubled, for she had feared an outbreak between him and Tim, and it seemed to be impending.  She dreaded it more than death, for any violence by her beloved parent toward her equally beloved brother would break her heart.  That parent, naturally placid and good-natured, had a frightful temper when it was aroused.  She could never forget that day when in a quarrel with one of his employes, he came within a hair of killing the man and for the time was a raging tiger.

There was one appeal that Maggie knew had never failed her, though she feared the day would come when even that would lose its power.  She reserved it as the last recourse.  When she saw her father rise to his feet, and in the gathering gloom noted the grim resolute expression on his face, she knew the crisis had come.

“Tell him to come down-stairs; we may as well have this matter settled here and now.”

“Father,” she said in a low voice of the sweetest tenderness, “you will not forget what he did two years ago?”

The parent stood motionless, silent for a minute, and then gently resumed his seat, adding a moment later,

“No; I can never forget that; never mind calling him just now.”

And what it was that Tim Hunter did “two years ago” I must now tell you.

CHAPTER II.

Bear in mind that Tim Hunter was twelve years old at the time, being the junior by two years of his sister Maggie.

On the day which I have in mind, he had spent the forenoon fishing, and brought home a mess of trout for which he had whipped one of the mountain brooks, and which furnished the family with the choicest sort of a meal.  The father complimented him on his skill, for that was before the parent’s patience had been so sorely tried by the indifference of the lad toward the vocation to which the elder meant he should devote his life.  He left the lad at liberty to spend the rest of the day as he chose, and, early in the afternoon, he proposed to his sister that they should engage in that old game of “jackstones” with which I am sure you are familiar.