l right."

"What's that you said?" asked Handy, suddenly brightening up. "A year
ago, did you say? Christopher Columbus! if we only had a place to show
in we could celebrate the centennial anniversary of Gotown."

His hearers burst into laughter, and Big Ed concluded that the way Handy
took in the situation was worthy of a treat on the house, to which the
newcomer, Myles O'Hara, was specially invited.

"Say, Myles," inquired the boss, as they stood in front of the bar, "how
long will it take to finish the Academy?"

"Inside and outside?"

"Yes. Both. Complete."

"Well, that depinds. As Rafferty has the contract, I should say three
days."

"Three days!" exclaimed Handy and his friend from Weston.

"I'm spakin'!" replied Myles, in a consequential manner. "An' be the
same token, I know what I'm talkin' about. Three days sure, an' mind
yez, Ed, I don't say that bekase I work for Rafferty. I'm not that kind
of a man."

"An' make a good job of it?" asked McGowan.

"Well, he may not give you much gingerbread work in the shape of
decorations, but you'll have a dacint-lookin' house enuff for an academy
of music."

"Ed," interposed the man from Weston, "if you could only get the place
ready, what a Jim Dandy house-warming we'd have, in addition to the
celebration commemorating the birthday of the town! Do you think the job
can be put through on schedule time?"

This made Myles a trifle irritated. "Arrah, what are yez spakin' about?
Look-a here, me frind, I'm givin' ye no ghost story. Didn't Rafferty put
up ould Judge Flaherty's house inside of a week, and moved in the day it
was finished, an' thin have a wake there the next evening," argued
Myles, by the way of a clincher to his argument.

"All right, Myles, I know you know what men can do if it comes to a
pinch," responded Big Ed, somewhat nervously. "But let me ask you, could
a stage be put in the hall for the opening?"

"A stage--do yez main an omnibus?"

"No, I don't mean no omnibus," replied the big fellow, with a humorous
twinkle in his eye.

"A scaffoldin', thin, I persume ye main," continued Myles.

"Oh, darn it, no! I mean a stage--a stage for acting on."

"Oh, I see now. I comprehind. A stage for show actors," replied O'Hara,
as if a sudden light had dawned upon his not particularly brilliant
imagination. "Let me ask yez, what's the matter with a few impty
beer-kegs standing up ag'in' the wall, an' in the middle, with beams
stretched acrost them