ds as well as your own."

I paused, wondering if, after all, he could be made to see. I know now
how the surgeon must feel at the crucial moment of his accomplished
operation. Will the patient live or die?

The road-worker drew a long breath as he came out from under the
anesthetic.

"I guess, partner," said he, "you're trying to put a stone or two in my
ruts!"

I had him!

"Exactly," I exclaimed eagerly.

We both paused. He was the first to speak--with some embarrassment:

"Say, you're just like a preacher I used to know when I was a kid. He
was always sayin' things that meant something else and when you found
out what he was drivin' at you always felt kind of queer in your
insides."

I laughed.

"It's a mighty good sign," I said, "when a man begins to feel queer in
the insides. It shows that something is happening to him."

With that we walked back to the road, feeling very close and
friendly--and shovelling again, not saying much. After quite a
time, when we had nearly cleaned up the landslide, I heard the husky
road-worker chuckling to himself; finally, straightening up, he said:

"Say, there's more things in a road than ever I dreamt of."

"I see," said I, "that the new spectacles are a good fit."

The road-worker laughed long and loud.

"You're a good one, all right," he said. "I see what YOU mean. I catch
your point."

"And now that you've got them on," said I, "and they are serving you
so well, I'm not going to sell them to you at all. I'm going to present
them to you--for I haven't seen anybody in a long time that I've enjoyed
meeting more than I have you."

We nurse a fiction that people love to cover up their feelings; but I
have learned that if the feeling is real and deep they love far better
to find a way to uncover it.

"Same here," said the road-worker simply, but with a world of genuine
feeling in his voice.

Well, when it came time to stop work the road-worker insisted that I get
in and go home with him.

"I want you to see my wife and kids," said he.

The upshot of it was that I not only remained for supper--and a good
supper it was--but I spent the night in his little home, close at the
side of the road near the foot of a fine hill. And from time to time all
night long, it seemed to me, I could hear the rush of cars going by in
the smooth road outside, and sometimes their lights flashed in at my
window, and sometimes I heard them sound their brassy horns.

I wish I could