Frederick cast back for solace through their joint history. It was he
who had always been the mainstay, the dependable one. Tom had laughed
and rollicked, played hooky from school, disobeyed Isaac's commandments.
To the mountains or the sea, or in hot water with the neighbours and the
town authorities--it was all the same; he was everywhere save where the
dull plod of work obtained. And work was work in those backwoods days,
and he, Frederick, had done the work. Early and late and all days he had
been at it. He remembered the season when Isaac's wide plans had taken
one of their smashes, when food had been scarce on the table of a man
who owned a hundred thousand acres, when there had been no money to
hire harvesters for the hay, and when Isaac would not let go his grip on
a single one of his acres. He, Frederick, had pitched the hay, while
Isaac mowed and raked. Tom had lain in bed and run up a doctor bill with
a broken leg, gained by falling off the ridge-pole of the barn--which
place was the last in the world to which any one would expect to go to
pitch hay. About the only work Tom had ever done, it seemed to him, was
to fetch in venison and bear-oil, to break colts, and to raise a din in
the valley pastures and wooded canyons with his bear-hounds.

Tom was the elder, yet when Isaac died, the estate, with all its vast
possibilities would have gone to ruin, had not he, Frederick, buckled
down to it and put the burden on his back. Work! He remembered the
enlargement of the town water-system--how he had manoeuvred and
financed, persuaded small loans at ruinous interest, and laid pipe and
made joints by lantern light while the workmen slept, and then been up
ahead of them to outline and direct and rack his brains over the
raising of the next week-end wages. For he had carried on old Isaac's
policy. He would not let go. The future would vindicate.

And Tom!--with a bigger pack of bear dogs ranging the mountains and