to get behind his chum. When the
latter saw his "pal" his courage increased wonderfully, but ere he had
time to put into execution the thoughts uppermost in his mind, Jack made
a feint, a step back and then a lunge ahead with a right-hand smash just
as he had seen his father hit the board, and the "bully" lay at his feet
writhing and kicking in defeat.

Whittaker took the licking very much to heart, and he carried a scar on
his lip, caused by Jack's blow, to his grave. Jack heard occasionally
that the "bully" had sworn to "get even," but as time passed and their
pursuits carried them into opposing channels, Whittaker soon became a
school-day reminiscence and later was not even remembered by name.

Jack's school days came to an end and he went into his father's mill to
work, learning the various methods of flour manufacture and manner of
marketing the product. The business did not seem to take his fancy.
"Something wrong in the industry," he would often say to the boss
miller. "Here you work this mill day and night, turn out three hundred
barrels of flour every twenty-four hours, yet lose money on the product
half the time. Six months of the year is a loss, but none of the mill
owners can give the reason why."

"You're right, kid; but that ain't nothin' to me to figger out. I've
been dressin' mill stones an' cuttin' them burrs ever since I was your
age, an' it's allus been the same. Sometimes it's the wheat, sometimes
the weather, but in the end it's as you say. P'raps it's the farmer, who
asks too big a price."

"No, it's not any one of those causes," said Jack, meditatively. "It's
that big engine down there eating up coal and the carrying charge to get
the flour to market. That's what ails the business. Look, now; see that
farmer with a load of wheat on the scales. There's father out there
taking a handful out of one sack and a cupful out of another. (Look out,
dad, you may strike a nest of screenings shot into the middle of one of
those sacks with a stove pipe.) He's bought the load and now it's going
into the hopper, where it will in all probability be mixed with inferior
grades. Then people complain the flour is no good, and you grind up a
lot of corn meal and feed it back into the flour, or regrind with some
middlings, until one can't tell whether it is flour or hog feed, and
where are the profits? Now, let me tell you. I was listening the other
day to that little alderman over in the second ward. He was talking