augh pressed his arm affectionately--"this will be our
first jaunt away any distance together. We can have a lot o' fun. I'm
going to order me a new suit of clothes, and I am going to make you a
present of one, too. You needn't kick," as John drew back suddenly, "it
will be powerful small pay for all the figuring you did at night when
you was plumb fagged out."

"Well, I'll take the suit, too," John said, and smiled again. "You are
liberal, Sam, but you always was that way."

"Well, we'll go to the tailor shop together at noon," Cavanaugh said,
delightedly. "You can help me pick out mine and I'll see that Parker
fits you. You have got some shape to you, my boy, and you will cut a
shine up there."

Leaving his employer, John ascended to the roof again, this time through
the interior of the almost finished house, and out by a dormer window.
The old town stretched out beneath him. To the east the hills and
mountains rose majestically in their blue and green robe under the
mellow rays of the sun. A fresh breeze fanned John's face. A man near
him broke a slate by an unskilful stroke of the hammer and raised an
abashed glance to John.

"It is all right, Tim," he said. "I'm no good at slating myself. You
are doing pretty well for a new hand. Say, Sam's landed that court-house
contract."

The nailers and their assistants had heard. The hammers ceased their
clatter. Cavanaugh was seen standing in the middle of the road, looking
up at them. A man raised a cheer. Hats and hammers were waved and three
resounding cheers rang out. Cavanaugh took off his straw hat and stood
bowing, smiling, and waving.

"Lucky old duck!" Tim, who was a white man, said, "and he was afraid it
would fall through."

John's glance roved over the town, the only spot he had ever known.
Beyond the outskirts ran the creeks in which he had fished and bathed as
a ragged boy. Toward the south rose the graveyard a mile away. He could
see the dim roof of the ramshackle house in which he had lived since he
was five years of age. John looked at his watch.

"Get a move on you, boys," he said, in his old tone. "Say, that last
line is an eighth too low at this end. Lift it up. Take off the three
slates this way and nail 'em back. Damn it! Take 'em off, even if you
break 'em. I won't have a line like that in this job. It shows plain
from this window."

CHAPTER V

Two weeks later Cavanaugh and John left for Cranston, the Tennessee
village where the n