“But that chimney isn’t any good. You’ve got to build from the ground up—You can’t use the old foundation—?” “Well, not exactly use it, mebbe.” Uncle William looked at him thoughtfully. “I do’ ’no’s I can tell you, George, what he wants it that way for—You see he set by that chimney when he was a boy—and the’s something about it—about the idee, you know?” The carpenter looked at him with slow, smiling eyes. “‘Tain’t the chimney, then—He kind o’ likes the idea of a chimney—does he?... He didn’t say anything about the idea,” he added, “He just kind o’ fussed around when I tried to shift her—” He looked at the paper in his hand. “Well—I can’t tell—yet. I’ve got to figure on it—I’ll go down now and order my lumber, I guess.” He moved away toward the road and Uncle William got up. He crossed over to the old chimney and stood looking toward the hill that mounted above it. The sun had disappeared and the dark turf was soft.... Long reaches of turf and the cropping sheep that moved across it in slow shapes. Uncle William drew a deep breath and turned to the man who stood silent beside him—his eyes on the hill. “Does seem like home, don’t it, Benjy?” he said quietly, in the big, deep voice that boomed underneath like the sea. X THE young carpenter approached Bodet cautiously with his solution of the roof-line. They had talked it over a dozen times and Bodet had become restlessly impatient.... Ordway might be right, after all.... He looked at different forms of lattice-work and stone foundations and swore softly at a terrace—Ordway’s idea—with morning glories alongside.... Uncle William, any day, at any time of day, was in favor of a new plan altogether. He stood ready to furnish details—like his own house, mebbe, only bigger.... After this suggestion, every time it came up, he went out and sat on the rocks a long while and looked at the water. Andy coming by hailed him. “What you doing?” he called. “Just a-settin’ here a little,” replied Uncle William. “Ain’t Benjy to home?” demanded Andy. “Yes, he’s to home,” admitted William. Andy looked toward the house. “I wouldn’t go in, if I was you,” said William, “He’s kind o’ tending to things—in his mind.” But if Bodet fretted at delays and slow decisions and failure of material to arrive, he caught the spirit of the place, after a little, and settled down to it and held up work—a week at a time—while he changed details or pottered over new ones. Uncle William—in his element—went back and forth between the old chimney-place and his house, carrying ideas and bricks with impartial hand. George Manning, with one eye on his plans and the other on his men, pushed the work or held it back, as the wind blew. When the men grumbled over a foundation wall torn out and put in again, with a hair’s breadth of difference, he looked at them with slow, sympathetic eye and admitted that it wasn’t so very much different, maybe—just enough to look different, somehow.