ing. Charley Lembke, from his
porch across the street, called to him: "Goin' down town?"

"Yeh, I guess so."

"Ain't you afraid of bein' pinched?" Buzz turned his head quickly
toward the room just behind him. He turned to go in. Charley's voice
came again, clear and far-reaching. "I hear you had a run-in with
Hatton's son, and knocked him down. Some class t' you, Buzz, even if it
does cost you your job."

From within the sound of a newspaper hurled to the floor. Pa Werner was
at the door. "What's that! What's that he's sayin'?"

Buzz, cornered, jutted a threatening jaw at his father and brazened it
out. "Can't you hear good?"

"Come on in here."

Buzz hesitated a moment. Then he turned, slowly, and walked into the
little sitting room with an attempt at a swagger that failed to convince
even himself. He leaned against the side of the door, hands in pockets.
Pa Werner faced him, black-browed. "Is that right, what he said? Lembke?
Huh?"

"Sure it's right. I had a run-in with Hatton, an' licked him, and give'm
my time. What you goin' to do about it?"

Ma Werner was in the room, now. Minnie, passing through on her way to
work again, caught the electric current of the storm about to break and
escaped it with a parting:

"Oh, for the land's sakes! You two. Always a-fighting."

The two men faced each other. The one a sturdy man-boy nearing twenty,
with a great pair of shoulders and a clear eye, a long, quick arm and a
deft hand--these last his assets as a workman. The other, gnarled,
prematurely wrinkled, almost gnome-like. This one took his pipe from
between his lips and began to speak. The drink he had had at Wenzel's on
the way home sparked his speech.

He began with a string of epithets. They flowed from his lips, an acid
stream. Pick and choose as I will, there is none that can be repeated
here. Old Man Werner had, perhaps, been something of a tough guy
himself, in his youth. As he reviled his son now you saw that son, at
fifty, just such another stocking-footed, bitter old man, smoking a glum
pipe on the back porch, summer evenings, and spitting into the fresh
young grass.

I don't say that this thought came to Buzz as his father flayed him with
his abuse. But there was something unusual, surely, in the
non-resistance with which he allowed the storm to beat about his head.
Something in his steady, unruffled gaze caused the other man to falter a
little in his tirade, and finally to stop, almost apprehensive