wn into the kitchen. Fuchs selected boards from a pile of planks
grandfather had hauled out from town in the fall to make a new floor for
the oats bin. When at last the lumber and tools were assembled, and the
doors were closed again and the cold drafts shut out, grandfather rode
away to meet the coroner at the Shimerdas', and Fuchs took off his coat
and settled down to work. I sat on his work-table and watched him. He did
not touch his tools at first, but figured for a long while on a piece of
paper, and measured the planks and made marks on them. While he was thus
engaged, he whistled softly to himself, or teasingly pulled at his
half-ear. Grandmother moved about quietly, so as not to disturb him. At
last he folded his ruler and turned a cheerful face to us.

"The hardest part of my job's done," he announced. "It's the head end of
it that comes hard with me, especially when I'm out of practice. The last
time I made one of these, Mrs. Burden," he continued, as he sorted and
tried his chisels, "was for a fellow in the Black Tiger mine, up above
Silverton, Colorado. The mouth of that mine goes right into the face of
the cliff, and they used to put us in a bucket and run us over on a
trolley and shoot us into the shaft. The bucket traveled across a box
canon three hundred feet deep, and about a third full of water. Two Swedes
had fell out of that bucket once, and hit the water, feet down. If you'll
believe it, they went to work the next day. You can't kill a Swede. But in
my time a little Eyetalian tried the high dive, and it turned out
different with him. We was snowed in then, like we are now, and I happened
to be the only man in camp that could make a coffin for him. It's a handy
thing to know, when you knock about like I've done."

"We'd be hard put to it now, if you did n't know, Otto," grandmother said.

"Yes, 'm," Fuchs admitted with modest pride. "So few folks does know how
to make a good tight box that'll turn water. I sometimes wonder if
there'll be anybody about to do it for me. However, I'm not at all
particular that way."

All afternoon, wherever one went in the house, one could hear the panting
wheeze of the saw or the pleasant purring of the plane. They were such
cheerful noises, seeming to promise new things for living people: it was a
pity that those freshly planed pine boards were to be put underground so
soon. The lumber was hard to work because it was full of frost, and the
boards gave off a sweet sm