previously. He drew near and under the rich foliage
growing about the outskirts of Endelstow Park, the spotty lights and
shades from the shining moon maintaining a race over his head and down
his back in an endless gambol. When he crossed the plank bridge and
entered the garden-gate, he saw an illuminated figure coming from the
enclosed plot towards the house on the other side. It was his father,
with his hand in a sling, taking a general moonlight view of the garden,
and particularly of a plot of the youngest of young turnips, previous to
closing the cottage for the night.

He saluted his son with customary force. 'Hallo, Stephen! We should ha'
been in bed in another ten minutes. Come to see what's the matter wi'
me, I suppose, my lad?'

The doctor had come and gone, and the hand had been pronounced as
injured but slightly, though it might possibly have been considered
a far more serious case if Mr. Smith had been a more important man.
Stephen's anxious inquiry drew from his father words of regret at the
inconvenience to the world of his doing nothing for the next two days,
rather than of concern for the pain of the accident. Together they
entered the house.

John Smith--brown as autumn as to skin, white as winter as to
clothes--was a satisfactory specimen of the village artificer in stone.
In common with most rural mechanics, he had too much individuality to be
a typical 'working-man'--a resultant of that beach-pebble attrition with
his kind only to be experienced in large towns, which metamorphoses the
unit Self into a fraction of the unit Class.

There was not the speciality in his labour which distinguishes the
handicraftsmen of towns. Though only a mason, strictly speaking, he was
not above handling a brick, if bricks were the order of the day; or a
slate or tile, if a roof had to be covered before the wet weather set
in, and nobody was near who could do it better. Indeed, on one or two
occasions in the depth of winter, when frost peremptorily forbids all
use of the trowel, making foundations to settle, stones to fly, and
mortar to crumble, he had taken to felling and sawing trees. Moreover,
he had practised gardening in his own plot for so many years that, on an
emergency, he might have made a living by that calling.

Probably our countryman was not such an accomplished artificer in a
particular direction as his town brethren in the trades. But he was, in
truth, like that clumsy pin-maker who made the whole