e two smoked for a few moments in silence.

"What kind of a job do you want?" Conward asked at length.

"Any kind that pays a wage," said Dave. "If I don't like it I'll chuck
it as soon as I can afford t' be partic'lar, but just now I've got to
get a grub-stake."

"I know the fellow that runs an employment agency down here," Conward
answered. "Let's go down. Perhaps I can put you in right."

Conward spoke to the manager of the employment agency and introduced
Dave.

"Nothing very choice on tap to-day," said the employment man. "You can
handle horses, I suppose?"

"I guess I can," said Dave. "Some."

"I can place you delivering coal. Thirty dollars a month, and you
board with the boss."

"I'll take it," said Dave.

The boss proved to be one Thomas Metford. He owned half a dozen teams
and was engaged in the cartage business, specializing on coal. He was
a man of big frame, big head, and a vocabulary appropriate to the
purposes to which he applied it. Among his other possessions were a
wife, numerous children, and a house and barn, in which he boarded his
beasts of burden, including in the term his horses, his men, and his
wife, in the order of their valuation. The children were a by-product,
valueless until such time as they also would be able to work.

Dave's duties were simple enough. He had to drive a wagon to a coal
yard, where a very superior young man, with a collar, would express
surprise that he had been so long gone, and tell him to back in under
chute number so-and-so. It appeared to be always a matter of great
distress to this young man that Dave did not know which chute to back
under until he was told. Having backed into position, a door was
opened. There was a fiction that the coal in the bin should then run
into the wagon box, but, as Dave at once discovered, this was merely a
fiction. Aside from a few accommodating lumps near the door the coal
had to be shovelled. When the box was judged to be full the wagon was
driven on to the scales. If the load were too heavy some of it had to
be thrown off, while the young man with the collar passed remarks
appropriate to the occasion. If the load were too light less distress
was experienced. Then Dave had to drive to an address that was given
him, shovel the coal down a chute located in the most inaccessible
position the premises afforded, and return to the coal yard, where the
young man with the collar would facetiously inquire whether