a lovely woman presiding
over this house, and of all the comfort it will be to the gentle folk
that will fill it full, you will be glad that you have had a hand in
it."

Yates made his bow and stepped down. His auditors all stood for a
moment, under an impression that they were in church and had heard a
sermon. Their work had been so idealized for them--it had been endowed
with so much meaning--it seemed so different from an ordinary
"raising"--that they lost, momentarily, the consciousness of their own
roughness and the homeliness of their surroundings.

"Be gorry!" exclaimed Mike, who was the first to break the silence, "I'd
'a' gi'en a dollar if me owld woman could 'a' heard that. Divil a bit
does she know what I've done for her. I didn't know mesilf what a purty
thing it was whin I built me house. It's betther nor goin' to the
church, bedad."

Three cheers were then given to Yates and three to Jim, and, the spell
once dissolved, they went noisily back to the cabin and their supper.

That evening Jim was very silent. When they were about lying down for
the night, he took his blankets, reached into the chest, and withdrew
something that he found there and immediately hid from sight, and said
that he was going to sleep in his house. The moon was rising from behind
the trees when he emerged from his cabin. He looked up at the tall
skeleton of his future home, then approached it, and swinging himself
from beam to beam, did not pause until he had reached the cupola. Boards
had been placed across it for the convenience of the framers, and on
these Jim threw his blankets. Under the little package that was to serve
as his pillow he laid his Bible, and then, with his eyes upon the stars,
his heart tender with the thoughts of the woman for whom he was rearing
a home, and his mind oppressed with the greatness of his undertaking, he
lay a long time in a waking dream. "If so be He cares," said Jim to
himself--"if so be He cares for a little buildin' as don't make no show
'longside o' His doin's up thar an' down here, I hope He sees that I've
got this Bible under my head, an' knows what I mean by it. I hope the
thing'll strike 'im favorable, an' that He knows, if He cares, that I'm
obleeged to 'im."

At last, slumber came to Jim--the slumber of the toiler, and early the
next morning he was busy in feeding his helpers, who had a long day's
walk before them. When, at last, they were all ferried over the river,
and had started