told me about it with a quaver in his old
voice.

"How long ago was it?" I asked.

"Twenty-seven years."

He has sons and daughters left, and two of the sons he has well trained
as stone masons after him. They are good as young men go in a degenerate
age. They insist on working in cement! He has grandchildren in school,
and spoils them.

He is also a man of public interests and upon town-meeting day puts on
his good clothes and sits modestly toward the back of the hall. Though
he rarely says anything he always has a strong opinion, an opinion as
sound and hard as stones and as simple, upon most of the questions that
come up. And he votes as he thinks, though the only man in meeting who
votes that way. For when a man works in the open, laying walls true to
lines and measurements, being honest with natural things, he comes
clear, sane, strong, upon many things. I would sooner trust his judgment
upon matters that are really important as between man and man, and man
and God, than I would trust the town lawyer. And if he has grown a
little testy with some of the innovations of modern life, and thinks
they did everything better forty years ago--and says so--he speaks, at
least, his honest conviction.

If I can lay my walls as true as he does, if I can build myself a third
part as firmly into any neighbourhood as he has into this, if at seventy
years of age--if ever I live to lay walls with joy at that time of
life--if I can look back upon _my_ foundations, _my_ heaven-pointing
towers, and find no cracks or strains in them, I shall feel that I have
made a great success of my life....

I went out just now: the old man was stooping to lift a heavy stone. His
hat was off and the full spring sunshine struck down warmly upon the
ruddy bald spot on the top of his head, the white hair around about it
looking silvery in that light. As he placed the stone in the wall, he
straightened up and rubbed his stubby hand along it.

"A fine stone that!" said he.

CHAPTER XI

AN AUCTION OF ANTIQUES

"I would not paint a face
Or rocks or streams or trees
Mere semblances of things--
But something more than these."

"I would not play a tune
Upon the sheng or lute
Which did not also sing
Meanings that else were mute."

John Templeton died on the last day of August, but it was not until some
weeks later that his daughter Julida, that hard-favoured woman, set a
time for the auction. It fell happily upon a mellow autu