oughter be ashamed of myself."

Hence it is easily seen that neither to Wilton in general nor to
Celestina in particular was Willie Spence a trial.

No, it was to himself that Willie was the torment. "I plague myself
'most to death, Tiny," he would not infrequently confess when the two
sat together at dusk in the little room that looked out on the reach of
blue sea. "It's gettin' all these idees that drives me distracted.
'Tain't that I go huntin' 'em; they come to me, hittin' me broadside
like as if they'd been shot out of a gun. There's times," ambled on
the quiet voice, "when they'll wake me out of a sound sleep an' give me
no peace 'til I've got up and 'tended to 'em. That notion of hitchin'
a string to the slide in the stove door so'st you could open the
draught without stirrin' out of your chair--that took me in the night.
There warn't no waitin' 'til mornin'! Long ago I learned that. Once
the idee has a-holt of me there's nothin' to do but haul myself out of
bed, even if it's midnight an' colder'n the devil, an' try out that
notion."

"The plan was a good one; it's saved lots of steps," put in Celestina.

"It had to be done, Tiny," Willie answered simply. "That's all there
was to it. Good or bad, I had to carry it to a finish if I didn't
sleep another wink that night."

The assertion was true; Celestina could vouch for that. After ten
years of residence in the gray cottage she had become too completely
inured to hearing the muffled sound of saw and hammer during the wee
small hours of the night to question the verity of the statement.
Therefore she was quite ready to agree that there was no peace for
Willie, or herself either, until the particular burst of genius that
assailed him had been transformed from a mirage of the imagination to
the more tangible form of tacks and strings.

For strings played a very vital part in Willie Spence's inspirational
world. Indeed, when Celestina had first come to the weathered cottage
on the bluff to keep house for the lonely little bachelor and had
discovered that cottage to be one gigantic spider's web, her initial
impression was that strings played far too important a part in the
household. What a labyrinthine entanglement the dwelling was! Had a
mammoth silkworm woven his airy filaments within its interior, the
effect could scarcely have been more grotesque.

Strings stretched from the back door, across the kitchen and through
the hallway, and disappeared