ere?' Mr
Springett turned stiffly in his chair.

A long pile of scaffold-planks ran down the centre of the loft. Dan
looked, and saw Hal o' the Draft's touzled head beyond them. [See 'Hal
o' the Draft' in PUCK OF POOK'S HILL.]

'Be you the builder of the Village Hall?' he asked of Mr Springett.

'I be,' was the answer. 'But if you want a job--'

Hal laughed. 'No, faith!'he said. 'Only the Hall is as good and honest
a piece of work as I've ever run a rule over. So, being born hereabouts,
and being reckoned a master among masons, and accepted as a master
mason, I made bold to pay my brotherly respects to the builder.'

'Aa--um!' Mr Springett looked important. 'I be a bit rusty, but I'll try
ye!'

He asked Hal several curious questions, and the answers must have
pleased him, for he invited Hal to sit down. Hal moved up, always
keeping behind the pile of planks so that only his head showed, and sat
down on a trestle in the dark corner at the back of Mr Springett's
desk. He took no notice of Dan, but talked at once to Mr Springett about
bricks, and cement, and lead and glass, and after a while Dan went on
with his work. He knew Mr Springett was pleased, because he tugged
his white sandy beard, and smoked his pipe in short puffs. The two
men seemed to agree about everything, but when grown-ups agree they
interrupt each other almost as much as if they were quarrelling. Hal
said something about workmen.

'Why, that's what I always say,' Mr Springett cried. 'A man who can only
do one thing, he's but next-above-fool to the man that can't do nothin'.
That's where the Unions make their mistake.'

'My thought to the very dot.' Dan heard Hal slap his tight-hosed leg.
'I've suffered 'in my time from these same Guilds--Unions, d'you call
'em? All their precious talk of the mysteries of their trades--why, what
does it come to?'

'Nothin'! You've justabout hit it,' said Mr Springett, and rammed his
hot tobacco with his thumb.

'Take the art of wood-carving,'Hal went on. He reached across the
planks, grabbed a wooden mallet, and moved his other hand as though he
wanted something. Mr Springett without a word passed him one of Dan's
broad chisels. 'Ah! Wood-carving, for example. If you can cut wood and
have a fair draft of what ye mean to do, a' Heaven's name take chisel
and maul and let drive at it, say I! You'll soon find all the mystery,
forsooth, of wood-carving under your proper hand!' Whack, came the
mallet on the chisel,