Chapin

On August 15, 1887, the plaintiffs and ' the defendant were copartners doing business in the firm name of Sugar Pine Mill and Lumber Company. Their business was that of manufacturing and selling lumber. They owned one hundred and sixty acres of timber land, upon or near which they had built a sawmill. On August 15, 1887, a written contract between the copartnership and two of its individual members, namely, Chapin and the defendant Brown, was executed, by which the copartnership agreed to sell to Chapin and Brown, and the latter agreed to purchase, all the lumber to be sawed from the timber then standing or fallen on the said one hundred and sixty acres of land, “or that may be sawed in the mill of the said parties of the first *301 part [the copartnership] from other claims before finishing sawing the timber from the above-described claim [the one hundred and sixty acres] ” at the price of $9 per thousand feet, to be delivered in the mill-yard. The parties of the first part further agreed that after the year 1887 they would deliver, as aforesaid, “an annual amount of one million feet or more, at the option of the said second parties. ’ ’ The agreement contains other stipulations…