up the stairs into Willie's bedroom, where
one pull of a cord lifted the iron latch to admit Oliver Goldsmith, the
Maltese cat, whenever he rattled for entrance. There was a string that
hoisted and lowered the coal hod from the cellar through a square hole
in the kitchen floor, thereby saving one the fatigue of tugging it up
the stairs.

"A coal hod is such an infernal tote to tote!" Willie would explain to
his listeners.

Then there was a string which in like manner swung the wood box into
place. Other strings opened and closed the kitchen windows, unfastened
the front gate, rang a bell in Celestina's room, and whisked Willie's
slippers forth from their hiding place beneath the stairs; not to
mention myriad red, blue, green, yellow, and purple strings that had
their goals in the ice chest, the pump, the letter box, and the storm
door, and in connection with which objects they silently performed
mystic benefactions.

Probably, however, the most significant string of all was that of stout
twine that reached from Willie's shop to the home of Janoah Eldridge,
two fields beyond, just at the junction of the Belleport and Harbor
roads. This string not only linked the two cottages but sustained upon
its taut line a small wooden box that could be pulled back and forth at
will and convey from one abode to the other not only written
communications but also such diminutive articles as pipes, tobacco,
spectacles, balls of string, boxes of tacks, and even tools of moderate
weight. By means of this primitive special delivery service Jan
Eldridge could be summoned posthaste whenever an especially luminous
inspiration flashed upon Willie's intellect and could assist in helping
to make the dream a reality.

For it was always through Willie's plastic imagination that these
creative visions flitted. In all his seventy years Jan had been beset
by only one outburst of genius and that had pertained to whisking an
extra blanket over himself when he was cold at night. How much
pleasanter to lie placidly between the sheets and have the blanket
miraculously appear without the chill and discomfort of arising to
fetch it, he argued! But alas! the magic spell had failed to work.
Instead the strings had wrenched the corners from the age-worn
covering, thereby arousing Mrs. Eldridge's ire. Moreover, although Jan
had not confessed it at the time, the blanket while in process of
locomotion had for some unfathomable reason dragged in its w